Worm Breeder's Gazette 11(5): 11

These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.

On the Impending Transfer of Genetics Center Services

Don Riddle and Mark Edgley

Those who attended the 1989 C. elegans Meeting at Cold Spring Harbor 
may recall that we plan to transfer operation of the CGC to others at 
the end of our current contract, which is September 29,1992.  Happily, 
the timing of our decision coincided with new developments in the use 
of computers to integrate genetic and molecular data with other 
information on the worm.  With this in mind, we and the members of the 
CGC Advisory Committee proposed a plan at the meeting for the 
continuation of the various services that the CGC provides to the 
research community.  Specifically, Bob Herman agreed to assume 
responsibility for the strain collection, and Jonathan Hodgkin agreed 
to assume responsibility for the genetic map.  No plans were made for 
the maintenance of the bibliography compiled by the CGC, or for 
production of the Worm Breeder's Gazette.  The NIH will release a 
'request for proposals' to continue the CGC, and anyone may apply.  
However, we are pleased that at least one possible plan has emerged.  
Progress has been made since the meeting, mostly with regard to the 
genetic map.  Jean Thierry-Mieg and Richard Durbin have been working 
on a program to integrate all the strain, bibliographic and genetic 
information collected by the CGC with the growing physical map 
database (see their article elsewhere in this issue).  As we 
understand it, the program will eventually draw the genetic map 
directly from the data, and thus will be constantly updated as the 
physical map is now.  Simultaneously, Bruce Schatz and Sam Ward have 
been developing an 'electronic community' system that will complement 
the Thierry-Mieg/Durbin system (Schatz et al., WBG Volume 11 #4, p.  6)
.  These exciting events place all of us on the threshold of a 
powerful new information age for the worm.  We hope that the 
bibliography and the WBG will be handled as facets of the complete 
data management system.  
There is much to be accomplished over the next two years, since the 
details of the various transfers are yet to be worked out.  We are 
continuing to improve the strain list documentation and the programs 
that deal with all the record-keeping.  We hope to be able to move the 
strain collection to a new contractor sometime in the summer of 1992.  
Stay tuned! This should all be pretty entertaining.