WormBook has added two new contributions to WormMethods: Biochemistry and molecular biology and Genetic mapping and manipulation. Please visit WormBook to read these and other chapters.
WormBook has also recently updated the look of wormbook.org. The newly-available search feature and improved layout are designed to help our readers navigate through WormBook more efficiently.
For a monthly email containing information about new additions to WormBook, please sign up at www.wormbook.org/announce.html.
New release of WormBase: WS155
WormBase has been updated to the WS155 version of the database. New in this release are updated UniProt databases used for the precomputed BLAST results, and corrections to C. elegans to C. briggsae WABA nucleotide-level alignments due to sequence corrections. You can read the full release notes — as well as learn about any necessary patches to the database — on the WormBase Wiki.
Development & Evolution meeting abstract deadline: April 10th
April 10th is the abstract submission deadline for the first topics meeting on Development and Evolution, to be held June 22 – 25, 2006 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. See the meeting website for additional details.
RFAs for the modENCODE Consortium announced
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) plans to initiate a model organism ENCODE (modENCODE) Project that will try to identify all of the sequence-based functional elements in the Caenorhabditis elegans and/or Drosophila melanogaster genomes. The project will be run as a Research Network called the modENCODE Consortium which is supported by two RFAs. The first RFA (RFA-HG-06-006) solicits applications for a set of projects that will conduct experiments to identify functional elements in the target genomes and the second RFA (RFA-HG-06-007) solicits applications to participate in the Research Network as a Data Coordination Center. Both experimental and computational approaches will be part of modENCODE and the project will be associated with, but separate from, the human ENCODE (ENCyclopedia of DNA Elements) Project that was launched by NHGRI in 2003. Questions about the modENCODE Project should be directed to either Elise Feingold or Peter Good at ENCODE@mail.nih.gov
Positions available with the Textpresso project
Textpresso, the software that powers the literature search at WormBase and other model organism databases, has two positions available at Caltech: Biological curator at WormBase (contact Paul Sternberg) and Software Developer (contact Michael Muller).