What does the Gene Status field mean (e.g. live, dead, suppressed)? This field appears in the filter list in BioMart for a Gene dataset in the W220 database.
We generally keep all genes ever used by WormBase in the database, even if they are later cloned or decided to be not a gene at all.
Therefore genes can have a live or dead status (dead meaning these genes were decided to be wrong for some reason, which should be on their respective gene pages).
The “suppressed” status is a bit special and represents people submitting their data on genes to WormBase, but asking us to suppress that information until a later point in time.
I guess WormMart just slurped in all possible status and put them into dropdown menu.
Makes total sense. Thanks!