d58a6063a92330e5224c8139443f3571e85fb000 jnavarr5 Tue Jul 7 15:08:55 2026 -0700 Announcing the v500 CGI release, refs #37702 diff --git src/hg/htdocs/goldenPath/newsarch.html src/hg/htdocs/goldenPath/newsarch.html index fb477d24df8..b226b8fc7b6 100755 --- src/hg/htdocs/goldenPath/newsarch.html +++ src/hg/htdocs/goldenPath/newsarch.html @@ -52,30 +52,93 @@ <p>You can sign-up to get these announcements via our <a target=_blank href="https://groups.google.com/a/soe.ucsc.edu/g/genome-announce?hl=en">Genome-announce</a> email list. We send around one short announcement email every two weeks.</p> <p>Smaller software changes are not announced here. A summary of the three-weekly release changes can be found <a target=_blank href="https://genecats.gi.ucsc.edu/builds/versions.html">here</a>. For the full list of our daily code changes head to our <a href="https://github.com/ucscGenomeBrowser/kent/commits/master" target=_blank>GitHub page</a>. Lastly, see our <a href="credits.html" target="_blank"> credits page</a> for acknowledgments of the data we host.</p> <!-- ============= 2026 archived news ============= --> <a name="2026"></a> +<a name="070726"></a> +<h2>Jul. 7, 2026 UCSC Genome Browser reaches version 500</h2> +<p> +Today, we are releasing version 500 of the UCSC Genome Browser. We are glad +this milestone falls on July 7, the 26th anniversary of the day in 2000 when the +first publicly available assembly of the human genome working draft was posted on +the web here at UC Santa Cruz. +</p> + +<div class="text-center"> + <img src="../images/newsArchImages/UCSCReleaseDownloads.png" + alt="Graph of total web traffic at UC Santa Cruz in 2000, with a large + spike when the human genome assembly became available online"> + <p class="gbsCaption"><em>Total web traffic at the University of California, Santa + Cruz in 2000. The spike near July 7 shows the surge of downloads when the first + human genome assembly was posted. When the genome became available online, all + other web activity at the university shrank to the background.</em></p> +</div> + +<p> +That first assembly came from Jim Kent's GigAssembler in the spring of 2000, and it +made the draft human sequence freely available to everyone. Even then, that +track-based way of viewing a genome was not new. It came out of the Intronerator, an +earlier tool Kent built to explore the C. elegans genome, shown below. +</p> + +<div class="text-center"> + <a href="https://hgwdev-hiram.gi.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/tracks.exe?where=W02B9.1b" + target="_blank"> + <img src="../images/newsArchImages/intronerator.png" + alt="The Intronerator track display for C. elegans, showing cosmids, AceDB + gene predictions, C. briggsae homologies, and cDNA/EST alignments as + horizontal tracks over a genomic ruler" + width='50%'></a> + <p class="gbsCaption"><em>The Intronerator, Jim Kent's C. elegans tool from 2000. + It showed cosmids, gene predictions, cDNA/EST alignments, and C. briggsae + homologies as horizontal tracks over a genomic ruler, much like the Genome Browser + does today.</em></p> +</div> + +<p> +Five hundred versions later, the Genome Browser serves thousands of genome assemblies +across the tree of life, tens of thousands of annotation tracks, and a global +community of researchers, clinicians, educators, and students. Each of those 500 +versions added something new: assemblies and tracks, bug fixes, performance +improvements, and features requested by our users. We are glad to reach this number, +and to keep the data free and open, as it has been since that first release on +July 7, 2000. +</p> + +<p> +We would like to thank the many collaborators and data providers whose work fills +the Genome Browser, the worldwide community of users whose questions and feedback shape it, +and every past and present member of the UCSC Genome Browser team (engineers, +quality assurance, outreach, and support) who have carried the project from its +first assembly to version 500. The people behind those 500 versions are listed on +our <a href="/staff.html" target="_blank">staff page</a>, and you can read more about +how the project began on our +<a href="/goldenPath/history.html" target="_blank">history page</a>. We are +grateful to everyone who helped us reach this milestone, and we look forward to the +versions still to come. +</p> + <a name="070126"></a> <h2>Jul. 1, 2026 New SNV Frequencies container track on hg38</h2> <p> We are pleased to announce a new <a href="/cgi-bin/hgTrackUi?db=hg38&position=default&g=varFreqs" target="_blank"><b>SNV Frequencies</b></a> container track on the human assembly (GRCh38/hg38). The collection unifies single-nucleotide variant allele frequencies from 30+ population resequencing and biobank projects worldwide, covering roughly 1.7 million genomes, exomes, and genotyping arrays, into a single place where a variant's frequency can be compared across populations, ancestries, and disease cohorts. </p> <p> The collection includes three combined tracks that aggregate the source