R--SUPPORT FOR THE HUMAN GENE NOMENCLATURE COMMITTEE

The National Library of Medicine intends to negotiate on a sole source basis with the University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E6BT, United Kingdom, under the authority of FAR 6.302. University College London was awarded a contract (NO1-LM-9-3533) on September 30, 1999 to continue the maintenance and updating of a database of human gene nomenclature. The Human Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) at the University College London is the world's recognized authority for creating and maintaining standardized and systematic human gene names. The HGNC was founded over 24 years ago by the human gene mapping community and is recognized as the authoritative source of gene nomenclature by the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). The purpose of the HGNC is to provide the scientific community with a unique and approved name and short-form symbol for every identified human gene, together with a description of each gene including its nucleotide sequence. The HGNC also is responsible for coordinating gene nomenclature across species and for promoting the utilization of standardized gene nomenclature. Due to the rapid pace of genome research the demand for new gene name assignments has seen an unanticipated increase with over 7000 new assignments being made in the past four years. This number was nearly equivalent to the entire number of assignments made the previous 20 years. As the cost of sequencing continues to decrease and gene identification methods improve, the number of expected gene assignments will continue to escalate. The work of the HGNC is a critical component of human genome research world-wide since it acts as a central clearing house identifying and distinguishing genes thereby eliminating costly duplication of effort. The standardization of gene names is absolutely essential in making the voluminous amounts of data generated by the human genome project manageable and searchable. Genome database curation techniques rely increasingly on automated annotation and linking which have as their foundation a systematic, consistent, and hierarchical naming scheme. Therefore, since the number of genes requiring nomenclature assignments is expected to increase and since a greater number of groups are concentrating on annotating the human genome, it becomes essential to provide a continuing high level of nomenclature support to the genome project. The HGNC is a highly structured team of scientific experts, bioinformaticians, and editorial support personnel that have highly specialized skills not typically found in the general scientific community. Therefore, introducing a new contractor who would have to acquire and train personnel as well as develop procedures would add materially to the time and cost of this project. This notice of intent, therefore, is not a request for proposals. However, all responsible sources may submit a proposal which will be considered by the National Library of Medicine. See numbered note 22.