[
International Worm Meeting,
2009]
GENETICS, the peer-edited journal of the Genetics Society of America has partnered with WormBase (Arun Rangarajan, Hans-Michael Muller and Paul Sternberg) to produce interactive journal articles (in full text/HTML, XML and PDF outputs). A reader who clicks on a gene or protein name, allele, transgene (or potentially any object found in the database) is taken directly to the corresponding page in WormBase. This innovative project integrates two major modes of communication used in the biological sciences: journal articles and databases. The project offers several benefits to readers, including fast access to relevant information associated with a genetic object in the text. This information can be general, providing an overview (e.g. gene summary), or highly specific, providing an important experimental detail (e.g. the molecular lesion of an allele). Also, the project promotes standardization of individual object nomenclature (e.g. gene names) and simplifies connections when there is a nomenclature change. Finally, the objects remain connected but evolve with advancesin knowledge. The benefits to WormBase include increased use of and interest in the database, more efficient and extensive corrections of information in the database by the community, facile incorporation of new information, reverse integration of the database with the primary data in the literature, all with minimal ongoing cost. We will show examples of the article links to WormBase, and discuss a number of other initiatives being undertaken by the journal GENETICS.