WormBook: the online review of Caenorhabditis elegans biology.

WormBook (www.wormbook.org) is an open-access, online collection of original, peer-reviewed chapters on the biology of Caenorhabditis elegans and related nematodes. Since WormBook was launched in June 2005 with 12 chapters, it has grown to over 100 chapters, covering nearly every aspect of C.elegans research, from Cell Biology and Neurobiology to Evolution and Ecology. WormBook also serves as the text companion to WormBase, the C.elegans model organism database. Objects such as genes, proteins and cells are linked to the relevant pages in WormBase, providing easily accessible background information. Additionally, WormBook chapters contain links to other relevant topics in WormBook, and the in-text citations are linked to their abstracts in PubMed and full-text references, if available. Since WormBook is online, its chapters are able to contain movies and complex images that would not be possible in a print version. WormBook is designed to keep up with the rapid pace of discovery in the field of C.elegans research and continues to grow. WormBook represents a generic publishing infrastructure that is easily adaptable to other research communities to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge in the field.

Gene expression analysis: teaching students to do 30,000 experiments at once with microarray.

Genome scale experiments routinely produce large data sets that require computational analysis, yet there are few student-based labs that illustrate the design and execution of these experiments. In order for students to understand and participate in the genomic world, teaching labs must be available where students generate and analyze large data sets. We present a microarray-based gene expression analysis experiment that is tailored for undergraduate students. The methods in this article describe an expression analysis experiment that can also be applied to CGH and SNP experiments. Factors such as technical difficulty, duration, cost, and availability of materials and equipments are considered in the lab design. The microarray teaching lab is performed in two sessions. The first is an introductory wet bench exercise that allows students to master the basic technical skills. The second builds on the concepts and skills with students acquiring and analyzing the microarray data. This lab exercise familiarizes students with large-scale data experiments and introduces them to the initial analysis steps.