All of the predefined GO slims, which are maintained by the GO Consortium, are available for use in QuickGO.
To use one of these slims, firstly, open the slimming page, which is linked from the QuickGO home page (“Explore Biology”).
On the left hand side of the page you will see three tabs which allow you to specify which terms are to comprise your slim. The first of these tabs, which is labelled “Predefined GO slims”, contains a drop-down list from which you can select the slim that you want to use.
When you have selected the slim, QuickGO displays the number of terms that it contains, split across the three GO aspects (molecular function, biological process, and cellular component); there is a checkbox associated with each aspect (and which is checked by default) which allows you specify whether you want to include terms from that aspect in the slim.
The next step is to add the slim terms to your selection, which you do by clicking the “Add to selection” button; QuickGO will then populate the “Your selection” part of the page with the full, expanded set of terms. Notice that, by default, the root terms for each GO aspect are not selected, but you can add them to your selection by clicking on the checkbox next to them in the “Optional root terms” section of the list. You can also refine your selection further by removing individual terms by clicking on the blue cross that appears after the term’s name when you hover the mouse over the term.
If you want to find annotations for a specific set of gene products (or a particular taxonomic group), then you can enter the details in the “Additional options” section, on the right hand side of the page before clicking the “Apply” button; if you don’t use these additional filtering options, QuickGO will find annotations for all gene products, with their GO terms slimmed up to the terms in your selection.