• http://www.wikipedia.org

Gene annotation has traditionally relied on relatively few individuals associated with specific gene or model-organism databases. However, the interactive web is now allowing many more researchers to add their collective knowledge to descriptions of genes and their functions. In one example, Wikipedia — the well known interactive internet encyclopaedia — has been used to provide a resource for gene annotation that is open to all.

As described in PLoS Biology, Huss and colleagues1 developed a template for a Wikipedia page (a stub) that can be used for any human gene. The basic information consists of gene symbols and aliases, identifiers that link to key databases, and Gene Ontology terms, with other information (for example, gene expression patterns) being provided if available. Users can add to this in a variety of forms, including free text, diagrams and links to related pages; the accuracy of information also relies on a community effort to eliminate incorrect information.

With this basis in place, the authors pulled in information from Entrez Gene to create new stubs and to amend existing gene pages. As of February 2008, 7,500 new stubs had been generated, and 650 pages amended.

How successful has this effort been so far in terms of encouraging community-based annotation? From examining numbers of edits, Google rankings and numbers of hyperlinks between related pages, the authors conclude that their efforts have already doubled mammalian gene annotation through Wikipedia and provided high-profile, widely used pages. Given the short amount of time since the creation of the stubs, and that the PLoS Biology paper is the first published announcement of this effort, they predict that these pages will become an increasingly popular and informative resource.