The gene ontology (go) resource provides dynamic controlled vocabularies to aid in the description of the functional attributes and subcellular locations of gene products from all taxonomic groups (www.geneontology.org). A renal-focused curation initiative, funded by Kidney Research UK and supported by the GO Consortium, has started at the European Bioinformatics Institute and aims to provide a detailed GO resource for mammalian proteins implicated in renal development and function. This report outlines the aims of this initiative and explains how the renal community can become involved to help improve the availability, quality and quantity of GO terms and their association to specific proteins.