It has been a busy year for the MyGene.info team as they worked to apply the lessons they learned in building MyGene.info and MyVariant.info towards a BioThings framework, and the generation of additional services. At this rate, 2017 is on track to be a very interesting year.

In 2016, aside from all the BioThings improvements happening behind-the-scenes, MyGene.info saw a number of improvements including:
-2016.07.07: API updated to v3

-2016.08.18: Python Client Updated to v.3.0.0
-2016.08.25: ExAC functional constraint scores added

-2016.11.30: API status added to site

Even more exciting was the incredible progress made by other groups that use MyGene.info's service, especially CIViC and MyGene2.

Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer (CIViC) is an open data resource which demonstrates the power/utility of open data and crowdsourcing for cancer variant annotations. In addition to having a user-friendly interface that encourages community cancer variant annotation, the brains behind this valuable bioinformatics resource also committed to open data by switching to public licensing.

MyGene2 is simultaneously a means for crowdsourcing information on gene variants and a valuable matchmaking tool for the rare disease community. The site's ingenious use of open data for both researchers and patients alike have made it a finalist for the Open Science Prize (and if you can vote for it to win here)

2016 saw a large increase in MyGene.info usage which happily means that other researchers are finding the service useful and hopefully making progress in their important work. According to google analytics, MyGene.info's user increased to ~51 Million requests this year--over double the 19.2 Million recorded last year.

Other than the incredible work (done by others) using MyGene.info, the team has been busy this year sharing about their efforts:
-2016.01.22: Chunlei presents update for Heart BD2K technical conference call

-2016.03.29: MyGene.info/MyVariant.info paper accepted to Genome Biology
-2016.04.05: Kevin presents at ISCB's NGS 2016 conference

-2016.05.10: Corresponding press release to Eureka Alert and Science Daily
-2016.05.25: Genome Biology blog post

-2016.05.30: Rarecast podcast about mygene.info
-2016.06.09: Elasticsearch blog post

-2016.07.10: Kevin's poster presentation at ISMB 2016
-2016.07.12: Chunlei's presentation at ISMB 2016

-2016.11.29: Chunlei's presentation at BD2K AHM 2016
-2016.11.28-30: Kevin's poster presentation at BD2K AHM 2016

Here's looking forward to an exciting 2017...we can't wait to see what you do!