WormBook experienced some staff changes in the last couple of months. WormBook Editor Lisa Girard and Program Developer and Web Publisher Tristan Fiedler left WormBook in July and August. Jane Mendel, a WormBook author and Senior Research Associate and Lecturer at Caltech, joined WormBook as the new Editor. During the transition period, WormBook expanded the Post-embryonic development section with a new chapter Dauer.
Service Interruption (aceserver)
Aceserver — the WormBase data mining server — will be offline Monday 20 Aug 2007 for scheduled maintenance. Queries using AQL and WQL will be unavailable during this time, as will programmatic access using AcePerl and Bio::DB::GFF.
New release of WormBase: WS178
WormBase has been updated to the WS178 release of the database. Release notes are available on the WormBase Wiki.
Topics Meetings announced
The topics meetings for 2008 have been anounced. Three meetings will be held: Development & Evolution; Neuro; and Aging, Stress, & Pathology. See the WormBase Wiki for additional details.
Prize for the isolation of a sister species to C. elegans!
Announcing a prize for the isolation of a sister species to C. elegans: $4000 and the right to suggest the species name! Researchers interested in comparative biology and genomics wish to work with species that are more closely related to C. elegans than to C. brenneri, remanei and briggsae. A guide to the contest and isolation of the species has been prepared by Jim Thomas, Marie-Anne Félix, Scott Baird, Karin Kiontke, Michael Ailion, and David Fitch. Instructions for handling samples are in the guide. Prize money is handled by Paul Sternberg ([email protected]); contributions to increase the prize are welcome.