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The following essay by Jonathan Berg, Bradford Powell, and Richard Cheney inaugurates a new series of genome annotation articles in Molecular Biology of the Cell. The MBC Editorial Board extends an open invitation to the cell biology community to volunteer articles for this series.

The MBC Genome Annotation Essays are based on the premise that specialized knowledge of biological function and protein structure is essential for accurate genome annotation and for comparisons of complex genomes. MBC will provide a forum to publish annotations of families of genes of interest to cell biologists, with the confidence that this more focused "small science" approach will produce more penetrating and interesting analyses than the global, large-scale efforts. MBC will publish the large data sets behind these studies on the MBC Web site (www.molbiolcell.org).

Berg and Cheney's article, entitled "A Millennial Myosin Census," is the model for this series. To my knowledge (Pollard, T.D. Nature 409:842-843, 2001), their annotation of human myosin genes is the most complete and accurate available. They also compare the myosin gene families of all of the completely sequenced eukaryotic genomes. Berg and Cheney's insights regarding evolution are fascinating and surprising.

Readers of MBC can look forward to the following upcoming annotation articles and authors.

  Rab GTPases: William Balch

  Adhesion Receptors: Richard Hynes

  Rho Family GTPases and Their Targets: Anne Ridley

  Tubulin Family: Tim Stearns

  Actin-Related Proteins: Barbara Winsor

  Adaptins: Juan Bonifacino and Markus Boehm

MBC is interested in publishing complete accounts of the human genes in a family of interest and comparison with the gene endowment of the other eukaryotes with completely sequenced genomes. To be manageable, each article should be sharply focused (i.e., myosins rather than all biological motors). To avoid duplication and to confirm that the topic is appropriate, potential contributors should make an inquiry to MBC (mbc{at}ascb.org) before submitting an article.