Worm Breeder's Gazette 5(1): 4
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
The Caehorhabditis Genetics Center (CGC), sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, was funded on September 30, 1979. Dr. Don Murray is the NIA Project Officer. As you know, the CGC is to be responsible for strain acquisition, banking and distribution. Strains will be available without cost to all qualified investigators pursuing genetics-related studies with C. elegans. Other CGC functions will include maintenance of the genetic map, coordination of genetic nomenclature and maintenance of a current data bank on all strains, including bibliographic information. During the first year, we will be developing a computerized system for storage and retrieval of this information. The program will be designed to allow other labs with CRT terminals remote access to the computer data files. We have recently mailed a questionnaire regarding your anticipated use of the Center's services. Since your responses may help us to modify the design of the services to be offered, we would appreciate your returning those questionnaires as soon as possible if you have not already done so. If you did not receive our mailing and anticipate using the CGC, please contact us. We plan to maintain a complete library of articles on Caenorhabditis, so we would appreciate it if you also would send us one copy of each of your Caenorhabditis publications. We have recently done a retrospective search of the literature and will soon be distributing a complete C. elegans bibliography as a supplement to this Newsletter. The new bibliography contains about 350 references, and we plan to update it with each future issue of the Newsletter. We would like to thank Bob Herman for the excellent job he has done as a volunteer stock distribution center. The immensely valuable work that Bob Herman and Bob Horvitz have done on the genetic map surely is apparent to everyone. Bob Herman will be supplying us with many strains he has received from other laboratories and we hope to have a relatively up-to-date C. elegans collection in a few months. The CGC is scheduled to be fully operational by the Fall of 1980, but some services are available now.