By the time you read this, NCBI's LocusLink will be no more. As of 1 March 2005, it will have been replaced by NCBI's Entrez Gene.

Born in 1999, LocusLink has served the genetic community well. It was created to help manage and access increasing amounts of sequence data and web resources. The first publication1 to describe it refers to it as a “web directory” that “provides a single point-of-access to a variety of gene-specific information sources including web resources and RefSeq”.

Throughout its life, LocusLink was continuously updated to inform us not only about the sequence and function of an increasing number of species but also about the correct gene nomenclature. So why did it have to go, and what of its replacement?

In fact, it might be better to view the recent events as the metamorphosis of LocusLink rather than its demise, as Entrez Gene incorporates all of the LocusLink data and can be thought of as its enhanced extension. It provides a unified look and feel for gene-specific information and contains data for many more species, including mitochondrial and plastid genome data for more than a half of them.

Entrez Gene has some important additional functionality — for example, it can display information about splice variants, intron/exon organization and a wealth of data on protein–protein interactions. The 'search' function is much improved — for example, one or more species or taxonomic groups of interest can be used to restrict the queries. Moreover, query parameters can be saved and results sent to you by means of the 'My NCBI' function, as information is updated. The king is dead, long live the king!