organism but no synteny evidence or are novel genes waiting for Human Genome Nomenclature Committee approval. (Xenbase uses human nomenclature to facilitate accessibility to the broader research community.) The 10 833 machine-annotated gene catalog entries are marked as ‘provisional- machine annotated only’. Of these, 9264 gene catalog entries were added based on sequence similarity to a human gene based on a maximum e-value of 1e 10 with a minimum 55% identity and 65% coverage. Their symbols and names have the stipulation that they were machine-predicted matches using Entrez gene. The remaining 1558 genes were added based on synteny evidence to some other organism. Their symbols are set as unnamed and their names are set as the Metazome homology description. STOCK CENTER Xenbase has entered into an agreement to provide bioinformatics support for the EXRC. At the current time, Xenbase supports a catalog of Xenopus lines carried by the EXRC. IMPROVED SEARCH, NAVIGATION AND BLAST To improve users’ experience we have made numerous improvements to Xenbase search and navigation. Suggestions have been added to the mini search bar. Terms matching database records are provided as the user types their search term. An advanced gene search now allows users to search the gene catalog by any com- bination of gene symbol, names, synonyms, ortholog symbols, function and OMIM, GO, Aﬀymetrix or Xenbase IDs. We have also introduced a beta ‘search all’ to the minibar that allows users to search all dynamic and static content from one search box. Finally, the Xenbase gene catalog is now indexed and can be searched via Google. In addition to added search capability, we have added navigation controls to search results, allowing users to page forward and backward through query search results. We have also made extensive eﬀorts to enhance the speed of Xenbase queries. We perform constant database tuning and make use of techniques such as materialized views to ensure that database queries are suﬃciently fast. We currently target under 5 s for page load times. The current average onsite gene search time and gene page load time are 4 and 2.5 s, respectively. Our dedicated blast search has been placed on faster servers and provides almost instant searches of Xenopus sequence data. XENBASE AND THE COMMUNITY Xenbase provides stewardship over the XAO and acts as a clearinghouse for Xenopus nomenclature. As a community-directed database, we take feedback from a variety of community sources: an advisory board, the Xenopus steering committee, community surveys, feedback at community meetings and requests sent to us Nucleic Acids Research, 2010, Vol. 38, Database issue D611 via email or our feedback and ‘submit data’ links. Xenbase annotations are used as inputs into NCBI Entrez gene and Uniprot Xenopus records. Xenbase also participates in the Phenoscape project, Amphibanat, Open Biological Ontologies and Generic Model Organism Database (GMOD). FUTURE DIRECTION Our primary future direction will place a stronger emphasis on manual curation. This curation will focus on gene expression, literature and phenotypes. We will also start generating A and B versions of laevis genes by using both published gene pair sets (8,9) and our own pair predicting system. Also, the ability to search gene expres- sion data by sequence (10) will be added to the expression search. To improve community participation, a Xenopus Wiki will be integrated with Xenbase. Further work will focus on developing support for phenotypes, microarrays NextGen seqeunce data and ultimately gene regulation networks. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are indebted to the University of Calgary Department of Computer Science for systems support, space, infrastructure and user of servers for operating our Blast search. Large scale in situ data was generously provided by Nicolas Pollet and Naoto Ueno. FUNDING National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD045776 for Xenbase); Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council via collaboration with the EXRC (BB/F020627/1) for stock center section. Funding for open access charge: University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources. Conﬂict of interest statement. None declared. REFERENCES 1. Segerdell,E., Bowes,J.B., Pollet,N. and Vize,P.D. (2008) An ontology for xenopus anatomy and development. BMC Dev. Biol., 8, 92. 2. Bowes,J.B., Snyder,K.A., Segerdell,E., Gibb,R., Jarabek,C., Noumen,E., Pollet,N. and Vize,P.D. (2008) Xenbase: a xenopus biology and genomics resource. Nucleic Acids Res., 36, D761–D767. 3. Hubbard,T.J., Aken,B.L., Ayling,S., Ballester,B., Beal,K., Bragin,E., Brent,S., Chen,Y., Clapham,P., Clarke,L. et al. (2009) Ensembl 2009. Nucleic Acids Res., 37, D690–D697. 4. Stein,L.D., Mungall,C., Shu,S., Caudy,M., Mangone,M., Day,A., Nickerson,E., Stajich,J.E., Harris,T.W., Arva,A. et al. (2002) The generic genome browser: a building block for a model organism system database. Genome Res., 12, 1599–1610. 5. Nieuwkoop,P.D. and Faber,J. (1994) Normal Table of Xenopus Laevis (Daudin). Garland, New York. 6. Pollet,N., Schmidt,H.A., Gawantka,V., Vingron,M. and Niehrs,C. (2000) Axeldb: a Xenopus laevis database focusing on gene expression. Nucleic Acids Res., 28, 139–140.