WS247: C. briggsae genes have descriptions!

In the previous WS246 release we introduced automated gene descriptions for C. elegans genes that lacked a manually written one. These gene descriptions include information related to orthology, process, function and sub-cellular localization (when these data-types have been curated in the WormBase database), giving the user a quick overview of the gene. The current WS247 release includes automated descriptions for over 18,000 C. briggsae genes.  Check out the C. briggase gene pages to view these descriptions under ‘Overview’!  In future releases, we will add genes from many more species!  Also, WormBase is working on user-friendly forms which you can use to edit these descriptions and make them better.

Ascaris suum genome in WormBase

The newly published Ascaris suum genome (Aaron Jex, et al, Nature 2011 Oct 2) is available at WormBase including it’s geneset. The data has been added to GBrowse/BLAT/BLAST and can be downloaded as FASTA/GFF3 files from the WormBase FTP server.

Ascaris suum is a model for other parasitic Ascaris, as well as causing itself economic damage to pig farming. In addition it is known to be resistant to a large number of antihelminth chemicals.

New data: male neural connections in WormBase

The WS220 release of WormBase contains release 2 of the Male Wiring Project (MWP), at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. This data consists of neural connections found in the adult male tail. It adds 8,400 pair-wise connections to WormBase , taking the total to 22,500 connections. All neural connection data in WormBase can be accessed using NeuroBrowse, an interactive graphical tool. A link to NeuroBrowse is on the relevant anatomy pages or it can also be directly launched. A brief user guide for NeuroBrowse is on our wiki. We thank MWP for sharing data with WormBase. Please visit the MWP web site for updates and additional information.