A gene summary is a brief description of the key functional aspects of a gene and appears in the “Overview” widget of every gene page in WormBase. Recently we changed the rules for inclusion of data such as large scale expression cluster data and protein domain data in gene summaries. When functional data as represented by Gene Ontology (GO) process, function or cellular component annotations are available for a gene, these are used to generate a gene summary. When no GO annotations are available for a gene, then functional data from the orthologous human gene is included in the gene summary. Further, if no tissue or cellular expression is available for the gene, expression cluster and protein domain data are included in the gene summary. Please see the microPublication that describes these updates to the gene summaries for C. elegans and other nematodes in the WS294 release of WormBase.

Check out the two new chapters in WormBook, GENETICS, “Life history in Caenorhabditis elegans: from molecular genetics to evolutionary ecology” by Christian Braendle and Analise Paaby, and “Neurogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans” by Richard Poole, Nuria Flames, Luisa Cochella.

Check out the new release (version 7.4.0) of the Alliance of Genome Resources (Alliance). A notable feature of this release is that it includes ~2.5 million variants of clinical significance from ClinVar! To learn more about this release see the Release Notes.

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been named the 2024 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering work on microRNAs.

We extend our hearty congratulations to Victor and Gary for this outstanding achievement and their years of service to the C. elegans community and beyond!

Thanks to all our community curators for their contributions to the ACKnowledge project! The new top 10 list is available on WormBase, check it out!

Check out the two new chapters in WormBook, GENETICS: Extracellular vesicles by Juan Wang, Maureen Barr, and Ann Wehman and The Caenorhabditis elegans cuticle and precuticle: a model for studying dynamic apical extracellular matrices in vivo by Meera Sundaram and Nathalie Pujol.

The WormBase website has been updated to the WS293 release (check out the release notes for details). This release features the addition of balancers to SimpleMine! Now you can find balancers and their reference strains for a list of C. elegans genes under the “Genetics, Interactions and Phenotypes” menu.

Thanks to all our community curators for their contributions to the ACKnowledge project! The new top 10 list is available on WormBase, check it out!

Check out the new chapter–Dendrite morphogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans by Maxwell Heiman and Hannes Bulow in WormBook, GENETICS.

Learn about the latest updates to the Alliance of Genome Resources and WormBase status and migration plans in papers published in the May issue of GENETICS!