Webs of interconnected proteins and genes keep cells running. To explore these networks, visit BioGRID from molecular biologist Michael Tyers of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, and colleagues.

Stowed here are all known genetic and protein interactions in budding yeast, along with partial lists for humans, nematodes, and fruit flies--more than 167,000 associations in all. Curators glean data from the literature and update the collection monthly. Each entry maps the liaisons of a particular protein or gene and summarizes the experimental evidence for each association. Included is the interaction network for the enzyme Cdc14, which controls the exit from mitosis.

Volume 315, Number 5817, Issue of 09 March 2007

You'd be lost if you opened a mystery novel at chapter 5 instead of chapter 1. But cells don't always start at the beginning when they copy a gene into RNA. A gene can contain multiple start sites, or promoters, and which one a cell chooses can change in diseases such as cancer. For a list of these initiation sequences, check out the Eukaryotic Promoter Database, hosted by the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics in Lausanne. The site compiles experimentally verified promoters from a host of species, including humans, nematodes, fruit flies, and cattle. Users can browse the entries or compare them to their own sequences.

Science 13 October 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5797, p. 229

The race to find the genes behind common ailments is heating up as many research groups scan patients' entire genomes for markers linked to disease. When it opens later this month, the Genomic Medicine Database (GMED) from Boston University (BU) will showcase such results from 1320 participants in the famed Framingham Heart Study, which has followed the health of a small Massachusetts town for 50 years. You can peruse the chromosomes for possible associations between about 10 traits--such as hypertension and high cholesterol levels--and 100,000 genetic markers, known as SNPs. Click to zoom in on the genes near a SNP. The BU team is posting data before publication so that other researchers can quickly seek to replicate the findings, says GMED co-curator Marc Lenburg. "Our hope is that others will follow our lead" and share unpublished data, he says.

Science 8 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5792, p. 1367