The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) aims to give every human gene a unique and ideally meaningful name and symbol. The HGNC database, previously known as Genew, contains over 22,000 public records with approved human gene nomenclature and associated information. The database has undergone major improvements throughout the last year, is publicly available for online searching at http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/searchgenes.pl and has a new custom downloads interface at http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/gdlw.pl.