| EDITORIAL

WormBook: WormBiology for the 21st Century

n this issue of , the Genetics Society of America repository for research data on all aspects of the biology, ge- Ilaunches WormBook, a collection of reviews encompass- netics, and of C. elegans, but also for other nema- ing the breadth and depth of elegans research. tode species (Howe et al. 2015). The publication of over 150 We invite novice and established C. elegans researchers, and chapters in WormBook has furthered the WormBase mission the many scientists working on other organisms, related to make information about the worm accessible and available topics, or orthologous , to learn in these pages about to the community. the insights that have come from work on C. elegans since This fourth incarnation, launched here as WormBook in the publication of Sydney Brenner’s foundational article in GENETICS,ismorethanjust“WormBook II.” It is an oppor- GENETICS (Brenner 1974). tunity to respond to the ever-increasing pace and complexity WormBook in GENETICS is really the fourth incarnation of of C. elegans research by treating information and discover- a community project that began with the publication of a Cold ies in a more synthetic and interdisciplinary way. Thus, Spring Harbor monograph, “The Nematode Caenorhabditis WormBook in GENETICS will have a different section orga- elegans,” in 1988—a still useful volume that contains 12 chap- nization to encourage bigger themes, and many chapters are ters plus appendices with much basic information about the being conceived with the express purpose of bringing to- worm, as well as Sydney Brenner’s proposal to the Medical gether subtopics that can be tied together by common mech- Research Council describing his rationale and vision for the anisms or overarching questions or lessons. Indeed, in many worm, and showing that we are all still standing on his cases it has been difficult to decide in what section a chap- shoulders. The second Cold Spring Harbor monograph, “C. ter belongs, so we anticipate cross-listing some chapters so elegans II,” published in 1996, grew to contain 30 chapters that readers can find all relevant chapters while browsing plus appendices. It also contains a preface in which Brenner asection. remarked not only on the breadth of the biology encompassed WormBook in GENETICS will publish review articles span- in those pages but also on “the wonderful feature that I ex- ning the range of C. elegans biology over the course of about perienced first and which everyone has experienced since: 4 years. These articles will be accessible in the journal via that with a few toothpicks, some Petri dishes, and a micro- a WormBook collection on the GENETICS homepage. As scope, you can open the door to all of biology.” How we worm with past incarnations of this project, WormBook chapters people feel about our beast and our field cannot be said any in GENETICS will not necessarily supplant existing ones, better than that! and thus the two entities will be linked via their homepages. The third incarnation was the creation of WormBook, We launch WormBook with a new chapter, “CRISPR-based a pioneering online compendium “created in response to Methods for C. elegans Engineering,” and links to the need to develop a publishing model that could keep pace a primer and several Perspectives articles that have appeared with a rapidly growing knowledge base and provide a central in GENETICS. repository for methods and protocols” (Girard et al. 2006). We gratefully acknowledge the important contributions Chapters of WormBook were published beginning in 2005 in of Martin Chalfie, the founding editor-in-chief of Worm- conjunction with WormBase, which began as a pioneering Book, and Paul Sternberg, the publisher of chapters hosted effort to expand the database of the genome-sequencing pro- via WormBase; the advisory board and section editors ject database into a web-based one-stop shop for information who have helped conceive and execute WormBook in about C. elegans, and is now thriving not only as the central GENETICS; and our many colleagues in the field who are contributing as authors and reviewers. Together, we will all ensure that this project represents and serves the needs of our community. Copyright © 2016 by the Genetics Society of America doi: 10.1534/genetics.116.187575 Iva Greenwald, WormBook Editor-in-Chief

Genetics, Vol. 202, 883–884 March 2016 883 Literature Cited

Brenner, S., 1974 The genetics of . Genetics elegans biology. Nucleic Acids Res. 35(Suppl 1): D472– 77: 71–94. D475. Dickinson, D. J., and B. Goldstein 2016 CRISPR-based methods for Howe,K.L.,B.J.Bolt,S.Cain,J.Chan,W.J.Chenet al., Caenorhabditis elegans genome engineering. Genetics 202: 885–901. 2015 WormBase 2016: expanding to enable helminth Girard, L. R., T. J. Fiedler, T. W. Harris, F. Carvalho, I. Antoshechkin genomic research. Nucleic Acids Res. 44(D1): D774– et al., 2006 WormBook: the online review of Caenorhabditis D780.

Advisory Board Monica Driscoll Tim Schedl Rutgers University Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis Pierre Gönczy Paul Sternberg Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne California Institute of Technology

Oliver Hobert Columbia University

Section Editors Cell and Organelle Biology Metabolism, Physiology, and Aging Michel Labouesse Monica Driscoll Institut de Biologie Paris-Seine Rutgers University

Barth D. Grant Adam Antebi Rutgers University Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing

Cell Fate, Signaling, and Development Neurobiology and Behavior Meera V. Sundaram Piali Sengupta University of Pennsylvania Brandeis University

Geraldine C. Seydoux Yuichi Iino Johns Hopkins University/HHMI University of Toyko

Evolution and WormMethods Marie-Anne Félix Oliver Hobert ’ Institut de Biologie de l Ecole Normale Supérieure Columbia University/HHMI

Asher D. Cutter Hannes Bülow University of Toronto Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Gene and Genome Regulatory Mechanisms John K. Kim Johns Hopkins University Susan Strome University of California, Santa Cruz

884 Editorial