A gene wiki for community annotation of gene function

Abstract

This manuscript describes the creation of comprehensive gene wiki, seeded with data from public domain sources, which will enable and encourage community annotation of gene function.

Figure 1. Example Gene Stub Created at Wikipedia for the ITK Gene

All gene stubs include annotation harvested from public databases, including genome location, protein structures, anatomic gene expression patterns, and gene functions.

Figure 2. Analysis of Gene Wiki Impact

(A) For the ~650 existing gene pages at Wikipedia that were amended with structured annotation, the cumulative rate of edits before and after addition was approximately the same. The rate of edits to the ~7,500 new gene pages was approximately 10-fold less than for the existing pages, though in total these edits accounted for approximately half of all edits to gene pages at Wikipedia. (B) When searching by gene symbol, Wikipedia gene pages are highly ranked by the Google search engine. Approximately 66% of all gene pages are found on the first page of search results. (C) The gene wiki can be analyzed in a network representation, where hyperlinks to other Wikipedia pages constitute network edges. Analysis of the network topology shows that connectivity follows a power law, indicative of a scale-free network.