<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">FYI, from the science journal "Nature":<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;"><I>Nature</I></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;"> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;"><B>446</B></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;">, 856 (19 April 2007) | doi:10.1038/446856a; Published online 18 April 2007</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; font: 10.1px Verdana; min-height: 12.0px"><BR></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="6"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18.7px;">Other riffs on cooperation are already showing how well a wiki could work</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">John D. Osborne</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/full/446856a.html#a1"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.8px;">1</SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">, Simon Lin</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/full/446856a.html#a2"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.8px;">2</SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> & Warren A. Kibbe</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/full/446856a.html#a3"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.8px;">3</SPAN></FONT></A></P><OL><LI style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;">University of Alabama at Birmingham, 845 19th Street South, Bevill Building, Room 273C, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA</SPAN></FONT></LI><LI style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;">Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University, 676 North St Clair, Suite 1200, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA</SPAN></FONT></LI><LI style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.1px;">Center for Genetic Medicine, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center and Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 676 North St Clair, Suite 1200, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA</SPAN></FONT></LI></OL><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px; font: 14.4px Verdana; min-height: 17.0px"><BR></P><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><B>Sir:</B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Barend Mons's Wiki for Professionals at </SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.wikiprofessional.info/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE">http://www.wikiprofessional.info</FONT></SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> is among the first open collaborative databases to use the wiki format in biology, as your News story "Key biology databases go wiki" (</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/445691a"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE"><I>Nature</I></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE"><B> 445</B></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE">, 691; 2007</FONT></SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">) points out.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">However, other, non-wiki resources have already shown the feasibility of cooperative, online database construction. One such success story is GeneRIF (</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/GeneRIF"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/GeneRIF</FONT></SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">), which is like a miniature wiki where the author is restricted to a single short sentence. Currently, GeneRIF contains close to 200,000 entries, and each is attached to a particular gene at the Entrez database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Being interested in gene–disease relationships, we assessed the coverage and specificity of GeneRIF and compared them to OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man), a traditional source of gene-disease information. We found that GeneRIF already covers more than twice the number of diseases per gene and includes many more newly discovered mappings (</SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/publications/generifdo"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#2C66CE">http://www.basic.northwestern.edu/publications/generifdo</FONT></SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">). This seems to us to answer the scepticism that has been expressed about the expected community involvement in wiki collaborations.</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>