Genew: The Human Gene Nomenclature Database

http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/searchgenes.pl

Wain,H.M., Lush,M., Ducluzeau,F., Povey,S.

HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) Department of Biology University College London Wolfson House 4 Stephenson Way London NW1 2HE, UK

Contact nome@galton.ucl.ac.uk

Database Description

Genew, the Human Gene Nomenclature Database, is the only resource that provides data for all human genes which have approved symbols. It is managed by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) as a confidential database, containing over 16,000 records, 80% of which are represented on the Web by searchable text files. The data in Genew are highly curated by HGNC editors and gene records can be searched on the Web by symbol or name to directly retrieve information on gene symbol, gene name, cytogenetic location, OMIM number and PubMed ID. Data are integrated with other human gene databases e.g. GDB, LocusLink and SWISS-PROT and approved gene symbols are carefully co-ordinated with the Mouse Genome Database (MGD). Approved gene symbols are available for querying and browsing at: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/searchgenes.pl.

Recent Developments

The Genew search engine was updated in July 2002. You can now search using free text, as well as some new fields including: HGNC IDs, location, PMID, sequence accession IDs, other database IDs, previous gene names and symbols. Also, it is now possible to link directly through to the gene record using either the HGNC ID, or gene symbol. For example, the link for CFTR is: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/get_data.pl?hgnc_id=1884 or http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/get_data.pl?match=CFTR.

Acknowledgements

The HGNC is supported by NIH contract N01-LM-9- 3533 and by the UK Medical Research Council. Many thanks to John Attwood (Sanger Centre), Julia White (Open University) and Gary Walsh for their past contributions to the maintenance and development of Genew. Thanks are also due to the HGNC editors Drs Elspeth Bruford, Ruth Lovering and Mathew Wright whose accurate curation and attention to detail ensure the validity of the gene records.