Updates to HCOP: the HGNC comparison of orthology predictions tool

Multiple resources currently exist that predict orthologous relationships between genes. These resources differ both in the methodologies used and in the species they make predictions for. The HGNC Comparison of Orthology Predictions (HCOP) search tool integrates and displays data from multiple ortholog prediction resources for a specified human gene or set of genes. An indication of the reliability of a prediction is provided by the number of resources that support it. HCOP was originally designed to show orthology predictions between human and mouse but has been expanded to include data from a current total of 20 selected vertebrate and model organism species. The HCOP pipeline used to fetch and integrate the information from the disparate ortholog and nomenclature data resources has recently been rewritten, both to enable the inclusion of new data and to take advantage of modern web technologies. Data from HCOP are used extensively in our work naming genes as the Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (https://vertebrate.genenames.org).

Automated summary

There are multiple resources predicting orthologous relationships between genes, with the HCOP search tool integrating data from these resources to provide reliability based on the number of supporting resources. The HCOP pipeline has been rewritten to include new data and utilize modern web technologies, and its data is extensively used by the Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee.