Press releases

• Life isn't 2D, so why should our encyclopaedias be? - Proteopedia
  
  
• Cancer signatures uncovered
  
  
• Human brains pay a price for being big
  
  
• Guidelines to prevent genetic discrimination
  
  
• Gene-expression profiling of the effects of liver toxins
  
  
• Large-scale community protein annotation - WikiProteins
  
  
• Mapping of prostate cancer genes opens the door to new treatments
  
  
• Break it down: genome sequence of Podospora anserina reveals unsuspected ability to use complex carbon sources
  
  
• Supplements are not nutritious
  
  
• On the trail of rogue genetically modified pathogens
  
  
• Scientists unravel the genetic coding of the pea
  
  
• New gene prediction method capitalizes on multiple genomes
  
  
• Generating antibodies in high throughput
  
  
• Blind mice shed light on human sight loss
  
  
• Bar flies: fruit flies help unravel the genetics of alcohol sensitivity
  
  
• Decoding effects of toxins on embryo development
  
  
• Free shopping in a virtual bazaar of gene regulation data
  
  
• Umbilical cord gene expression signals premature babies' lung disease risk
  
  
• The molecular signature of loneliness
  
  
• Air pollution link to clogged arteries
  
  
• The sound of proteins
  
  
• 'Drunk' fruit flies could shed light on genetic basis of human alcohol abuse
  
  
• Predicting chemotherapy outcome
  
  
• New species from old data
  
  
• Fruit flies unlock Methuselah's secrets
  
  
• Comparisons of the new mouse genome sequence
  
  
• Making sense of the human genome: researchers characterize a crucial family of signaling proteins in the human genome
  
  
• Stanford researchers argue that there is indeed a biological base for race
  
  
• Genomic study breathes new life into asthma research
  
  
• Why does a worm need nearly as many genes as a man?
  
  
• Genomes on 'chips' boon to cancer research
  
  
• BioMed Central is pleased to announce the publication of Sydney Brenner's autobiography
  
  
• A genomic blueprint for a sense of smell
  
  
• Researchers to publish a third historic human genome article in Genome Biology this week
  
  
• Human Genome project leaves much of human variation unsampled
  
  
• Diagnosis on a chip - molecular profiling that could improve diagnosis and help design better drugs
  
  
• Gene "shaving" could help doctors predict the efficacy of cancer treatments
  
  
• Whither genomics?
  
  
• Current Science Group declares support for 'PubMed Central' historic development
  
  
• Science publishing - beginning of a revolution?
  
  

Large-scale community protein annotation - WikiProteins

Today sees the launch of a new collaborative website initially focusing on proteins and their role in biology and medicine. The WikiProfessional technology underlying the site has been developed based upon the collaborative Wikipedia approach. Described in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, WikiProteins provides a method for community annotation on a huge scale.

The article is written by Barend Mons of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, and the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands, and his co-authors from Brazil, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. They include Amos Bairoch of UniProt, Michael Ashburner of GO and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

The source material for WikiProteins comes from a mixture of existing authoritative databases (such as the Unified Medical Language System, UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, IntAct and GO), supplemented by concepts mined from scientific papers published in public literature databases. The automated data mining identifies 'facts' in these available resources, such as protein functions or protein-disease relationships. This process created over one million biomedical concept clouds - called 'Knowlets' - around each individual concept. The developers of the site now hope that many researchers will follow their call to annotate, via WikiProteins, the Knowlets for which they are leading experts. The method enables researchers to add data even from sources that are not openly available, such as from journals only accessible via publishers' databases, immensely enhancing the potential for comprehensive coverage. Each page of text called up via the system is automatically indexed and concepts are connected to the WikiSpace, so that their definition comes up and the information can be edited directly from the page.

The resulting data in the Wiki is fully and freely accessible to the public, and entries can be annotated by any registered user. Mons said: "We here call on a million minds to annotate a million concepts and collect new facts from full-text literature with the immediate reward of collaborative knowledge discovery and recognition of Wiki-contributions to the scientific community."

Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is a freely available, collaboratively created online encyclopedia. WikiProteins maps to Wikipedia and has been created as part of the WikiProfessional initiative and there are plans to add new workspaces such as WikiPeople (an intellectual networking environment), and WikiChemicals for other communities.

A preview of the WikiProtein technology is available on the Genome Biology website.

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Article:

Calling on a million minds for community annotation in WikiProteins

Barend Mons, Michael Ashburner, Christine Chichester, Erik van Mulligen, Marc Weeber, Johan T den Dunnen, Mark Musen, Matthew Cockerill, Henning Hermjakob, Abel Packer, Roberto Pacheco, Suzanna Lewis, Alfred Berkeley, William Melton, Nickolas Barris, Katy Borner, Gerard Meijssen, Erik Moeller, Peter Jan Roes, Albert Mons, Gert-Jan van Ommen, Jimmy Wales,and Amos Bairoch

Genome Biology 9:R89.

http://genomebiology.com

Please quote the journal in any story you write, and link to the article if you are writing for the web.

For more information about this study, or about the journal, contact Chalotte Webber by email at press@biomedcentral.com or by phone on +44 (0) 20 7631 9980.

Please quote the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's Open Access policy.

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Genome Biology publishes articles from the full spectrum of biology. Subjects covered include any aspect of molecular, cellular, organismal or population biology studied from a genomic perspective, as well as genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, genomic methods (including structure prediction), computational biology, sequence analysis (including large-scale and cross-genome analyses), comparative biology and evolution. Genome Biology has an impact factor of 7.17.

BioMed Central, (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.