Human Disease Data Update

As part of WormBase efforts to curate genes that are potential models for inherited human diseases, 867 genes have been predicted as potential disease genes. In addition curation efforts added publications on experiments using C.elegans genes to investigate human genetic diseases to 181 genes. And 244 genes have been identified from publications as being relevant to research in that field.

WormBase curates human disease relevance data by designating genes as ‘Experimental models’ for a specific human disease based on experimental data published in the literature. In addition to manual curation, an automated data pipeline designates genes as ‘Potential models’ based on orthology with the human gene. Detailed text descriptions called ‘Human disease relevance’ descriptions describe how the elegans gene is a genetic model for the human disease. All human disease relevant data can be found in the ‘Human Diseases’ widget and in the ‘Overview’ section on gene pages.