What This Gene Does Screensaver
The What This Gene Does screensaver draws human genes one at a time with the curated plain-English summary that NCBI's annotators wrote for each: what the protein does, where it acts, and which disease appears when it fails. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.
How the What This Gene Does screensaver works
The saver reads MyGene.info, which serves NCBI gene annotation over a free API.
No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not allow browser access.
Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.
If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.
A worked example
One gene fills the screen: the symbol large, the full name beneath it, then the curator's summary wrapped to the width, with the chromosome in the corner. It cycles every eleven seconds or so. The query restricts to humans — taxid 9606 — because the same symbol exists in mouse, zebrafish and fruit fly, and cycling through four species' versions of the same gene is merely confusing.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
- Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
- Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Who writes these summaries?
- Curators at NCBI's RefSeq project, working from the published literature. They are written for scientists but are unusually readable, which is why they work on screen.
- Why only human genes?
- Because the same gene symbol is reused across species. Without the taxid filter the saver would show the human, mouse and zebrafish versions of one gene in sequence as though they were three different things.
- Is this real data?
- Yes. It comes from MyGene.info, which serves NCBI gene annotation over a free API. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
- Does it cost anything or need an account?
- No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.