The Gene Ontology (GO) project (http://www. geneontology.org/) provides structured, controlled vocabularies and classifications that cover several domains of molecular and cellular biology and are freely available for community use in the annotation of genes, gene products and sequences. Many model organism databases and genome annotation groups use the GO and contribute their annotation sets to the GO resource. The GO database integrates the vocabularies and contributed annotations and provides full access to this information in several formats. Members of the GO Consortium continually work collectively, involving outside experts as needed, to expand and update the GO vocabularies. The GO Web resource also provides access to extensive documentation about the GO project and links to applications that use GO data for functional analyses.

Organ asymmetry is thought to have evolved many times independently in plants. In Antirrhinum, asymmetry of the flower and its component organs requires cyc and dich gene activity. We show that, like cyc, the dich gene encodes a product belonging to the TCP family of DNA-binding proteins that is first expressed in the dorsal domain of early floral meristems. However, whereas cyc continues to be expressed throughout dorsal regions, expression of dich eventually becomes restricted to the most dorsal half of each dorsal petal. This correlates with the effects of dich mutations and ectopic cyc expression on petal shape, providing an indication that plant organ asymmetry can reflect subdomains of gene activity. Taken together, the results indicate that plant organ asymmetry can arise through a series of steps during which early asymmetry in the developing meristem is progressively built upon.

SummaryDorsoventral asymmetry in¯owers of Antirrhinum depends on expression of the cycloidea gene in dorsal regions of¯oral meristems. To determine how cycloidea might be regulated we analysed its expression in several contexts. We show that cycloidea is activated shortly after¯oral induction, and that in addition to¯owers, cycloidea can be asymmetrically expressed in shoots, even though these shoots show no marked dorsoventral asymmetry. Shoots expressing cycloidea include secondary branches lying just below the in¯orescence, and shoots of¯oricaula mutants. Asymmetric cycloidea expression may also be observed within organ primordia, such as the sepals of terminal¯owers produced by centroradialis mutants. Later expression of cycloidea within¯owers can be modi®ed by mutations in organ identity genes. Taken together, the results suggest that cycloidea can respond to a common dorsoventral pre-pattern in the apex and that the speci®c effects of cycloidea on the¯ower depend on interactions with¯oral-speci®c genes.

The main goal of the Gene Ontology (GO) project is to support the construction and use of structured, controlled vocabularies to address the growing need for meaningful annotation of genes and their products in different organisms. There are three key aspects of the GO project: the development of dynamic, controlled vocabularies that can be applied to all organisms even as knowledge of the roles of gene products is accumulating and changing; the application of GO terms in annotating genes or gene products; and the development and maintenance of databases and software for querying, displaying, and manipulating ontologies and associated annotation sets. The GO vocabularies are four nonoverlapping, structured networks of terms that describe key aspects of biology. Molecular function describes the activities or tasks performed by individual gene products at the molecular level; biological process describes broad biological goals that are accomplished by ordered assemblies of molecular functions; cellular component encompasses subcellular structures, locations, and macromolecular complexes; sequence ontology includes genome feature terms. The GO project's resources are available to the public at http://www.geneontology.org .

The Gene Ontology project (http://www. geneontology.org/) produces structured, controlled vocabularies and gene product annotations. Gene products are classified according to the cellular locations and biological process in which they act, and the molecular functions that they carry out. We annotate gene products from a broad range of model species and provide support for those groups that wish to contribute annotation of further model species. The Gene Ontology facilitates the exchange of information between groups of scientists studying similar processes in different model organisms, and so provides a broad range of opportunities for plant scientists.

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This work-in-progress paper in research category reports preliminary findings on how students taking introductory computing courses develop identity from the perspective of study difficulties. The motivation was that students identified lack of meaning and prospects (cf. identity) as a study difficulty in a previous qualitative study. The present study further explores this finding by issuing both an identity development and a selfefficacy scale to a larger first-year student cohort. The aim is to characterize the study cohort by the aspects included in the identity development scale, and thereby increase understandings of students' challenges. Moreover, a correlation analysis between identity development and self-efficacy was performed to explore if, for instance, low self-efficacy related to yet a loose identity choice. We also examined the effect of age. Main observations included that many students showed ruminative exploration of identity, which was negatively associated with self-efficacy. Altogether, a rather high number of negative and neutral responses with respect to the identity choice was observed. An initial look at self-efficacy distributions suggests that students related to challenge positively, while a large number of neutral answers were found with respect to the dimension of Effort. This might be indicative of uncertainty about doing the work. Regarding the effect of age, younger students were observed to worry more about the future compared to older students.