What's New

This page serves as a repository for the "Site News" displayed on the front page of this site. Older entries are archived here.

2008 updates

May 9: The Z_AI-maize B73 fosmid genomic library that was produced by Wash U to fill gaps and fill sequence in the BAC-based map is now publicly available to the community!

May 6: MaizeGDB is hiring a Web developer! To apply visit USAjobs. Contact Carolyn Lawrence for more information.

May 5: Use the feedback button at the bottom of any MaizeGDB page to report the correct the order of BACs within the physical map to the Maize Genome Sequencing Consortium!

March 13: Read about the iPlant Collaborative's potential for advancing maize research!

February 21: The maize meeting program is now available.

January 8: Welcome, new Editorial Board members Kelly Dawe, Jim Holland, and Mike Kolomiets!

2007 updates

*Important* December 28: Maize Meeting conference and hotel registration will only remain open until January 9! Click here to register.

November 29: The Maize Genome Sequencing Consortium's recently released status report and ppt presentations are now available.

November 14: The History Channel's production "MODERN MARVELS: CORN" gives a good overview of what happens to corn after it has been harvested (e.g., processing into ethanol, high fructose corn syrup and bio-plastics). This show is scheduled to be broadcast in some markets next Monday (Nov 19th) at 8 PM, but check your local listings.

October 3: We've created a new centralized Data Center for all those hard-to-find cytogenetics resources!

September 7: Microarray probe sequences from Zeamage are here!

August 16: Use the link to 'bulk data' in the header above to access large sets of data. Use the feedback button at the bottom of any page to request that new types of useful bulk data reports be created.

June 28: Taner Sen has begun work as a computational biologist for MaizeGDB! Welcome to the team, Taner.

June 26: The Allerton retreat report is now available.

May 1: Congratulations are in order: Hugo Dooner has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences!

April 30: Presentations from this year's Maize Meeting are now available here.

March 13: The Panzea project has generated a useful resource for localizing QTLs in maize and they want your involvement! For more details see Panzea's news release.

March 2: Check out the Newly Characterized Genes List!

February 27: Lisa Harper has begun work as a professional curator for MaizeGDB! Welcome to the team, Lisa.

January 25: Ron Phillips, an esteemed member of the maize research community, has been awarded the Wolf Prize! Congratulations, Ron!

January 8: We're hiring! Are you a computational biologist in search of a job? For more information, contact Carolyn Lawrence at triffid@iastate.edu or 515-294-4294.

January 5: Learn more about the upcoming NCCC167 North Central Regional Corn Breeding Meeting.

2006 updates

December 13: Details on the 2007 Maize Genetics Conference are now available.

November 20: Please read this announcement about new sorghum genome sequencing resources and opportunities.

November 7: The Maize Genome Sequence Browser has been released! Visit it at maizesequence.org!

September 12: Maize TILLING data are here! Find out about the maize TILLING project and browse through the list of TILLed sites.

July 25: MaizeGDB personnel assisted in providing plant genome research outreach to six Native American students. To read about the program and to see what the students accomplished, visit their website!

May 9: A summary of results from the MGEC survey are now available.

April 11: A number of presentations from the 2006 Maize Genetics Conference are available online through June 30.

March 28: A page containing a summary of information about the ongoing sequencing projects is now available.

March 14: Read the Plant Biology Databases: A Needs Assessment advisory whitepaper to the NSF and USDA-ARS to find out more about what can be done to enable the plant database projects to succeed!

March 1 The program for the Maize Genetics Conference is now available.

January 10: The 2006 Editorial Board has begun selecting publications! Look here to see their picks for use in your group's journal club.

2005 updates

December 21: The 2006 Maize Genetics Conference is coming! You can find out more information, register for the meeting, sign up for housing, and submit an abstract.

November 23: The NSF, USDA, and DOE have announced the latest maize genome funding award. More details here and here.

September 13: We've recently added several new maps and map reports, including the recombination nodule map! Check them out!

May 5: US postage stamps have been issued honoring a quartet of top scientists, including Barbara McClintock!

April 14: Some presentations from the 2005 Maize Genetics Conference are available for your perusal.

March 4: We are interested in incorporating your data into MaizeGDB. How can I contribute my data to MaizeGDB?

January 11: A list of noteworthy papers selected by our Editorial Board is now accessible through the References Data Center!

2004 updates

December 14: The 2005 Maize Meeting is just around the corner! You can register for the conference itself and for lodging, or submit a conference abstract! The deadline is January 20, 2005!

September 15: The National Plant Genome Initiative (NPGI) is soliciting requests for maize genome sequencing projects! MaizeGDB also now has a maize genome sequencing information center, including a number of relevant documents.

August 6 Pioneer, Monsanto, and Ceres have made some of their sequences available for non-profit use. Check out MaizeSeq for details

July 21: We are starting a page for pictures of maize research labs! Please send us a URL of your group's picture and we'll add it to our page!

May 17: A website for the maize genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics workshop is now available, containing lecture notes and other materials of interest to maize geneticists.

February 23: The final program for the Maize Genetics Conference is available.

January 5: The ZmDB website has been retired. All materials generated by the MGDP have been integrated into MaizeGDB.  For RescueMu and other Mu specific information, visit mutransposon.org, a Mu transposon information resource.

2003 updates

December 2: Visit the new Cytogenetic FISH 9 map and related chromosome images!

November 12: Please read this letter to the maize community concerning maize microarray resources.

November 10: Students! Learn more about how you can attend the Maize Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics Workshop to be held before the Maize Meeting this year!

October 7: Please read this important announcement concerning the establishment of the U.S. Rice Genomics Resources Center.

September 22: Our sequence database has been upgraded; we now house 1.3 million maize sequences!

September 12: MaizeGDB now includes the complete data from MaizeDB!

August 25: Maize Newsletter archives are now available for volumes 51 through 58. Volumes 59 through 77 are coming soon.

August 8: We have added an education section with lots of documents, including the Interactive Maize Plant from the Maize Mapping Project!

August 6: Thanks to a cooperation with CerealsDB, we now provide the ability to locate SNPs in public maize sequences. Visit your favorite sequence here, or see sequence AW787835 for example, to try it out!

July 23: We have added a job board to MaizeGDB to help maize community members find individuals to fill positions. You can easily submit new jobs to be posted on the board!

July 17: The ability to research references by author, year, and journal is available. If you would like other filters, let us know.

June 14: You can search for germplasm from GRIN using the stock search and the all records search!

June 9: Phenotype data from the Maize Gene Discovery Project is now available.

May 20: A fresh set of sequence data, including fresh EST and GSS contigs, has been added to the database, plus the blast databases have been refreshed! Check out your sequences!

May 19: Several improvements have been made to the map display, including filtering of loci, primer and sequence views, and linkages to maps displayed at other sites. See UMC 98 1 for an example of these features.

May 2: Rhubarb crisp is now the official dessert of MaizeGDB! Try it out today!

April 24: Two items: After some refinements, the original "anything" search has returned, returning results from most data sets reasonably fast. Also, we've added a MaizeGDB newsletter that you can receive via email; sign up today!

April 23: The database schema for MaizeGDB is available for download; you can find the link from the docs page.

April 3: We added search capabilities for the Maize Gene Discovery Project microarrays, as well as documentation for them and discussion of future microarray data plans, on our new microarray page.

March 26: Our site has been updated with a fresh set of data in all data sets, resulting in nearly one million new data points! Explore and have fun!

March 19: At the request of users, we have added a short presentation for use in introducing students and others to MaizeGDB.

March 10: See us at the Maize Genetics Conference! Posters related to MaizeGDB: #8 and #33. MaizeGDB talk: 9:30 - 9:45 AM Friday. Hope to see you there!

March 10: In response to user feedback for quicker results in the anything search, the anything search has been revised to return very quick, rough results. If you have any comments on this new feature, let us know.

March 7: We have completed a migration to a new server for MaizeGDB! If you run into any problems, let us know using the feedback link at the bottom of any page.

February 24: Users can now use tblastn and blastx in our blast tool.

February 21: A greatly enhanced links section has been added, and is formatted for easy printing for distribution to classes and other such uses!

February 11: We've added a new section to the site: Project Documentation & Protocols. It includes documenatation and protocols from significant maize research projects, serving as a central archive for such documentation. You can also reach it from the "docs" link on every page, or from the pull-down shortcuts menu at the top of each page.

February 7: A tutorial is now available for new users!

February 5: A new utility has been added to the site: a calendar of upcoming events! It is linked on the upper right corner of each page.

January 30: We have added detailed library information to our EST contigs. Here is a sample contig to view.

January 23: Due to popular request, we have constructed a page detailing how to link your website to MaizeGDB.

January 21: Many improvements have been made in terms of EST and sequence searching. Now, EST searching matches sequence records as well, and search terms will utilize the annotations we have for these sequence. Also, much more detail and information about clustering is available in the sequence data; visit the sequence page for more details.

January 10: A new EST contig assembly has been added to the database! Look up your favorite accession numbers in our sequence data, or use our blast tool for your sequence comparison needs!

January 6: We invite you to fill out our new user survey. You can link to it from any page using the link in the upper right.

2002 updates

December 30: MaizeGDB is looking for a biological analyst. If you are interested in this postdoctoral position, please read the details of the position and let us know!

December 20: A new tool has been developed that allows you to visually navigate through the maize genome. Try out MaizeGDB's bin viewer tool, and suggest to us some useful places to provide the visual chromosome views.

December 13: We're now officially known as MaizeGDB! The official URL is http://www.maizegdb.org... update your bookmarks!

December 11: The image browser tool has been significantly improved, adding browsing through phenotypes, pest species, and traits in addition to mutants, and adding the ability to filter the images.

December 10: A much-improved blast tool is now available; it now finds map locations and related loci.

December 6: MGDb now has a public annotation system. To find out more, visit the annotation page, or click on the "annotation" link on the upper right of any page. We're looking for any and all feedback and input on the system!

November 26: Locus record displays have been greatly improved. Now, nearby loci from high-density maps are included in the record, which allows users to quickly find information on nearby loci from a given locus record. See adh2 for an example of this.

November 21: Try out our new advanced map query!

November 18: Current EST clustering information is now available! Look at ZMtuc02-02-07-11871.1 for an example.

November 14: In response to user feedback, gene records now have significant sequence information directly on the record! Take a look at bz1, for example; note the new "Sequences" section, as well as additional search tools on the right-hand menu.

November 12: All searches now accept * as a wild card in addition to %. Also, the SSR browser has been upgraded significantly due to user feedback; check it out!

November 8: Over the next few days, we're going to be focusing on query optimization, in terms of both finding better matches and getting results faster. If you get some odd results in the next week or so for your searches, let us know.

November 7: There's a new data set to investigate: QTL data. If you have any thoughts/comments for other ways you'd like to access this data, let us know.

November 5: Try out our advanced variation search! The goal was to make filtering through the variation data as easy as possible; let us know if we succeeded, or if there are other features you would like to see.

November 4: A couple of new features today. First is a sequence browser tool, which lets you browse through the sequence data available here and filter it in various fashions. Also new is a gene symbols list, which summarizes the meanings of the gene symbols used on this site.

October 31: Check out our latest nifty tool, the SSR browser! As always, feedback is desired and encouraged!

October 31: Due to some DNS changes, the website will be unavailable for part of Friday morning, November 1. We should be back up by the early afternoon.

October 29: We're looking for ways to further optimize our page layouts. What do you think of this alteration?

October 28: We have a new tool available for examining phenotype data: the phenotype browser. This tool is designed for people who want to just browse through the phenotype data. We provide some filters and are interested in hearing about other filter ideas.

October 23: Take a site tour!

October 18: There's a new data type available: ESTs.

October 16: A new map tool: when you visit a map record (for example, IBM 9, you can now quickly find the other maps from the same experiment at the bottom of the record (in this case, IBM 1-10). In addition, you can also click and find the combined map for all ten chromosomes; for example, here is the complete IBM map.

October 15: A new data type is available for searching and review; take a peek at the phenotype data. We've also added a reference abstract search, so you can search for terms in the reference abstracts we store. You can find this on the reference page.

Ocbober 9: Several new tools today. We now have an image browser, which allows for a visual tour through the variation data; it utilizes our image data and provides an interesting visual way to look at the data. Also, you can now view data by chromosome; this is available both on the menu on the front page (on the left) as well as the data browsing page. This tool summarizes the interesting data for each chromosome in one place.

October 7 Some changes to the website interface were made which only affects Netscape 4 users; they now get a slightly different version of the site with some of the fancier elements taken away, resulting in a display that works much better with Netscape 4. Also, a new data type, gene products, has been added.

October 3: An interesting new tool was added for the study of overgo data; you can find it on the overgo hub page. The tool allows you to do sequence searches on the overgo data, and provides clear and colorful results. Give it a whirl!

October 2: The data types metabolic pathways, stocks, and variations are now available to explore; you can find hub pages for these on the left side of the main page or by clicking on "browse data" on any page on the site.

September 27: Several new features this week. The new datatypes SSR, RFLP, overgo, BAC, and cDNA are available for searches. Also, there are now "hub" pages for each data type; see the left column on the front page. In addition, there's a new section on the menu on the upper right corner of each page entitled "tools," which includes interesting tools of various types; it currently includes three blast variations, GeneSeqer, and a mapped accession number tool. Lots of other little features as you go around, too.

September 20: Protein records are now greatly improved, with related DNA sequences and motifs. See BAA22442 for an example, a fatty acid desaturase.

September 18: A new feature has been added that relates map and sequence data together. When you visit a map (IBM 1, for example), a tool is available on the right hand menu to display the map coordinates with respect to accession numbers (here's that view for IBM 1). Thus, interested parties can dig into sequence data as it relates to the maize maps we have in our database.

September 17: A couple of new features today. First is the beta release of our visual map displayer, which is linked on the right hand side of every map page. Here is a sample visual map display; comments are welcome, as always. The second is the vastly improved sequence records, which include a great deal of additional information about the sequence source and submission details; see AI438620 for an example.

September 12: Linkages between references and loci, references and probes, and references and maps have been established. Now, when you visit a reference record (an example), you'll find links to the materials that that paper describes, as well as links from individual materials back to the reference that describes them.

September 6: Progress is being made in developing "hub" pages for each specific type of data that MGDb can store. Here's such a page for locus data, which also includes a new "advanced search" tool. Comments are welcome.

August 23: You can now search and view map records. Here's a sample map record (UMC 1998 1).

August 22: An interesting new tool connecting locus and sequence data has been added. You can gather all of the ESTs at a particular loci and view them as a group, and then run clustal on this sequence group if you'd like. This tool is available for all loci. You can see what it looks like for sh2. We plan on adding similar tools in the future at the community's request.

August 20: Locus records are now available and are searchable using the form on the upper right of each page. Try a search for shrunken1 if you're interested.

August 5: The various searches have had a 3x increase in speed over the weekend.

August 1: The probe display has been rewritten to correct some of the slowness in linking ZmDB and MaizeDB data. It now loads in roughly 30% of the time compared to earlier. Compare before and after for an example.

July 22: Linkages between ZmDB and MaizeDB data are popping up for the first time on here; also, the full probe record set has been loaded.

July 16: A class browser has just been added. This lets users peruse through the data by data type and provides a more "browsable" method of searching.

July 10: A multitude of small improvements to reference search and display and journal display.

July 9: The reference search has now been optimized; it is roughly 20 times faster than it was previously.

July 8: A reference search is now available! You can use the basic form on each page to access this data set.

July 5: Attempts are being made to make XML displays useful to all, using the probe record as a model. When you visit a probe record, you can see both a stylized and a plain XML display. Let us know if you have any comments.

July 1: Record displays now have a "printer-friendly" option that eliminates some portions of the interface for better & smoother printing.

June 28: The "Anything" search has been rewritten; now, when there is only one match in the entire site, you are redirected there automatically.

June 27: Large number of changes today. These are summarized in this changelog.

June 26: Cleaned up some display issues for some older browsers, specifically Netscape 4. Let us know if you observe anything unusual in terms of page layout.

June 24: Consideration is being made of adding a section of interesting reports, which are one page summaries of information sets that might be of interest or use to the maize community. Got suggestions for report ideas? Let us know.

June 24: Added a person/organization browser. We are looking for suggestions for more filters for it.

June 21: In attempting to make our data widely available and in many forms to address the needs of the maize community, development of a set of XML standards which will be used to provide data from us and that (hopefully) other databases will adopt. Take a look at our first attempted standard, a DTD for probe data.

June 21: Added two new filters to the probe browser: the ability to eliminate probes without a designated preparer and the ability to eliminate probes that are currently unavailable. We're looking for suggestions for more filters.

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