Gene function annotations for the maize NAM founder lines

We annotated the latest published sequences of the 26 Zea mays Nested Association Mapping (NAM) founder lines using GOMAP, the Gene Ontology Meta Annotator for Plants. The maize NAM panel enables researchers to understand and identify the genetic basis of complex traits. Annotations of predicted functions for genes can help researchers investigate gene-phenotype associations, prioritize candidate genes for phenotypes of interest, and formulate testable hypotheses about gene function/phenotype associations. The creation and release of high-confidence, high-coverage gene function annotation sets for the NAM founder lines is critical to accelerate the generation of knowledge in maize genetics research. GOMAP is a high-throughput computational pipeline that annotates gene functions genome-wide in plant genomes using Gene Ontology functional class terms. Here we report and share GOMAP-generated functional annotations for the NAM founder lines. Datasets include the protein sequences used as input, GOMAP-generated annotation files, scripts used to update obsolete terms, and GAF-formatted tab-delimited text files of gene function annotations along with README files that describe formatting, content, and how files relate to each other.