The new comparative genomic analysis between C. elegans and humans, OrthoList 2 (OL2), was just published early online in GENETICS. OL2 comes with a new web-based tool that allows for rapid searches of OL2 by worm or human gene identifiers, protein domains (InterPro and SMART), or human-disease associations (OMIM), and also includes updated RNAi resources. The paper describes OL2 and various findings, including how the content of OL2 compares with the original OrthoList tool. The web-based tool for accessing OL2 is here.
WS265 release
loci with two different protein products
There are a small number of loci which code for two very different protein products. These include dicistronic mRNA operons and loci which have a few small exons in common then have alternate splicing leading to many different exons being used.
The details of some of these can be found in the WormBook chapter “Operon and non-operon gene clusters in the C. elegans genome”.
Previously, these have been curated as isoforms of a single gene. This was causing problems because the description of gene
function would be based on one isoform, leaving the other isoform undescribed or described incorrectly, based on the first isoform.
There are 42 C. elegans and 47 C. briggsae known loci that have now been split to have different Gene IDs.
Check out the latest chapter on microRNAs in WormBook
Check out the latest chapter in WormBook, GENETICS: Recent Molecular Genetic Explorations of Caenorhabditis elegans MicroRNAs by Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun.
High throughput datasets in SPELL now searchable based on topic
Data sets coming from high throughput experiments which reside in SPELL have now been updated with topics so that you can actually search by your favorite topic. You can see the topic search options by clicking the button ‘Options for Filtering Results by Dataset Tags‘ on the SPELL home page under the search box for Gene Name(s).
Which WB tool to use -check out our updated list and links
If you’re wondering which WormBase tool to use for your data needs, check out this updated list of tools with short descriptions for what to use them for. Click on the tool names to be taken directly to the tool.