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species Nomenclature,
genes, proteins & species Evolving terminology for emerging
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mchitty@healthtech.com Last revised November 19, 2001 K. Tipton and
S Boyce in “History of the enzyme nomenclature system” (Bioinformatics
16(1): 34-40 Jan 2000) write that “ambiguities in the words used for common
objects or actions have been the basis for many, more- or- less memorable
jokes, they can also cause a great deal of confusion … in the sciences
... many groups have stressed the need for standardized, universally accepted
systems of nomenclature in chemistry, genetics, enzymology, etc. However,
it is the universal acceptance that usually causes the problem. It is rare
to find people who will admit that they find nomenclature to be an interesting
subject, but many who profess contempt for it will get very excited if
it is suggested that their pet nomenclature should be changed in the interest
of clarity or uniformity.”Related glossaries
include Model
& other organisms. Carbohydrate nomenclature IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Commission on
Biochemical Nomenclature, Nomenclature of Carbohydrates, Recommendations,
1996 http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/2carb/ IUPAC-IUB Joint Commission
on Biochemical Nomenclature (JCBN), Nomenclature of glycoproteins, glycopeptides
and peptidoglycans, Recommendations 1985. http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/misc/glycp.html Enzyme Nomenclature A classification according to the
Enzyme Commission (EC) of the IUBMB (International Union of Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology). Enzymes are allocated four numbers, the first of
which defines the type of reaction catalyzed, the next two define the substrates,
and the fourth is a catalogue numbers. Categories of enzymes are EC 1,
Oxidoreductases; EC 2 Transferases; EC 3 Hyedrolases; EC 4 Lyases, EC 56
Isomerases; EC 6 Ligases (Synthetases). [IUPAC Bioinorganic] Enzyme Nomenclature, Nomenclature
Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
July 2000] http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme/ Links to individual enzyme documents,
includes citations for published versions. Gene nomenclature - integrating While the Gene OntologyTM
Consortium http://www.geneontology.org/
Functional genomics glossary
is not dealing specifically with gene nomenclature their efforts at
integrating terminology are an important step being able to compare genes
in any number of organisms (plants, model
organisms, and animals including humans). Human gene nomenclature There is "currently no official
nomenclature for human genes, however, the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee
(part of HUGO) is currently trying to establish a nomenclature standard
and does have a recommended format. The Human Gene Nomenclature Committee
is the accepted authority for establishing these standards. For new
genes lacking official nomenclature the research community is encouraged
to use the Nomenclature Committee web form to submit a proposed gene symbol
and name, thus creating a community provided name. In general, the
research community does try to conform to using pre- existing names but
these names might not be the current official nomenclature name so situations
do arise where a single gene is being called by multiple names. There
is no enforcement of this suggested nomenclature method and investigators
are free to name a gene as they wish. [dbSNP FAQ, NCBI, US] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/get_html.gene
nocgi?whichHtml=faq Guidelines for Human Genome Nomenclature,
HUGO 1997 http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/guidelines.html#2.2 HGNC Gene Family Nomenclature Guidelines,
HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee http://ash.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/genefamily.shtml Human Gene Nomenclature Database
Search, HUGO http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/nomenclature/searchgenes.pl
Can be restricted to approved symbols. Standardized Human Gene Nomenclature, NCBI News, Fall/Winter 2000 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Web/Newsltr/FallWinter2000/nomenclature.html Human gene mutation nomenclature Mutations "Recommendations for a nomenclature system for human gene
mutations, Nomenclature Working Group Human Mutation 11(1):1-3 1998 http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1059-7794/nomenclature.html See also the further note on Human Gene Nomenclature at the end of this
section. Plant and animal gene nomenclature Other Nomenclature Guidelines (for
non-human species), HUGO http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/moreguides.html
Includes plants (Arabadopsis,
rice) model organisms, cows and chickens, Model organisms
The
Gene OntologyTM project is a collaboration between the Arabadopsis,
C. elegans, Drosophila, mouse
and Saccharomyces people.
http://www.geneontology.org Gene
definitions See
also Model organisms
glossary. C. elegans Nomenclature: http://www.cbs.umn.edu/CGC/Nomenclature/nomenguid.htm Drosophila Nomenclature:
http://fly.ebi.ac.uk:7081/docs/nomenclature/lk/nomenclature.html Mouse Genome Nomenclature, Jackson
Lab, US http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen/ Rat Genetic Nomenclature, Rat Genome
Database, Goteborg University, Sweden http://ratmap.gen.gu.se/ratmap/WWWNomen/Nomen.htmlRatsites Saccharomyces cerevisae Nomenclature:
SGD Gene Naming Guidelines, Stanford University, US http://genome-www.stanford.edu/Saccharomyces/gene_guidelines.html Zebrafish nomenclature Guidelines http://zfin.org/zf_info/nomen.html Protein nomenclature SWISS- PROT Protein Sequence Data
Bank, List of nomenclature related references for proteins, Amos Bairoch. http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/lists?nomlist.txt Nomenclature of glycoproteins, glycopeptides
and peptidoglycans, Recommendations, IUPAC-IUB Joint Commission on Biochemical
Nomenclature (JCBN), 1985. http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/misc/glycp.html Nomenclature Rules for Recombinant
Proteins, IUPAC http://www.itb.uni-stuttgart.de:8080/IUPAC/nomenclature/nomen.html
IUBMB and IUPAC are setting up a
task force to address protein isoforms, protein glycoforms, genome-derived
proteins, artificial proteins derived from gene shuffling. Nomenclature and Symbols for Amino
Acids and Peptides, Recommendations, IUPAC and IUBMB and IUPAC-IUB Joint
Commission on Chemical Nomenclature 1983 http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/AminoAcid/ See also Enzyme Nomenclature. Species nomenclature: Taxonomy, NCBI, US http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/taxonomyhome.html/ Taxonomic databases are rather controversial since the soundness of the taxonomic classifications done by one taxonomist will be directly questioned by next taxonomist! Various efforts are going on to create a taxonomy resource (e.g. "The Tree of Life" project
(http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/life.html), "Species 2000"
(http://www.sp2000.org/), International Organization for Plant Information
(http://iopi.csu.edu.au/iopi/), Integrated Taxonomic Information System
(http://www.itis.usda.gov/itis/), etc.). The most generally useful taxonomic database is that maintained by the NCBI
[see above] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/
This hierarchical taxonomy is used by the Nucleotide Sequence Databases, SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, and is curated by an informal group of experts.
[Introduction to Molecular Biology Databases, R. Apweiler, R. Lopez, B. Marx,
1999] http://www.ebi.ac.uk/swissprot/Publications/mbd1.html Bibliography Alpha
glossary index HGNC Nomenclature:
Genes, weights and measures, animals, elements, and planets. H. Wain,
E. Bruford, A. Duncanson, R. Lovering, S. Povey July 2000 The authority charged with approving
and implementing human gene names and symbols is the Human Gene Nomenclature
Committee (HGNC) which is a sub- committee of HUGO (The Human Genome
Organisation). This was formed in the 1970’s (first reported by Shows et
al., 19791) when it was realised that a consistent, standardised gene nomenclature
would be vital to the collaborative effort
of maintaining databases of genes. Nomenclature committees were soon established
for both the human and mouse genes and guidelines (White et al., 19972
and Maltais LJ et al., 19973) published in conjunction with
the reports from the HGM (Human Genome Mapping) meetings. In a further
development, databases, initially the Genome Database (GDB) and the Mouse Genome
Database (MGD), also implemented "approved" gene nomenclature as part of
their curation system. Since the inception of the HGNC,
the numbers of databases have continued to expand with many more now available
online. This means that standardised gene symbols are even more important
as they ensure correct labelling of any individual gene across the breadth
of databases available. All the major databases containing information
on human genes now use the HGNC standard for approved symbols. Thus, when searching
with the symbol ABCC1 information about only that gene will be retrieved
from LocusLink, GDB, OMIM, GeneCards, GenBank and GENATLAS. This standardisation
will become more crucial once the whole of the human genome is sequenced;
there are now over 10,400 approved gene symbols in the HGNC online database ... However, it is not just human gene
databases which are making use of the information and invaluable curation
skills of the HGNC, but also many other organism gene databases. Where
possible, these try to use the same gene symbols for confirmed orthologous
genes in order to maintain consistency and searchability. ... There
are a number of journals which now insist on the use of approved gene symbols.
These include: Genomics, Nature Genetics, The Annals of Human Genetics,
Mammalian Genome, Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics and of course,
Radiation Research. There are also a number of other journals which mention
nomenclature in their instructions to authors. Thus the penultimate barrier
to accurate information retrieval is being overcome, as approved symbols
can now be found in the literature databases such as PubMed contained in
the titles and abstracts. Some journals have tried to include all known
aliases of a particular gene in a publication to ensure understanding by
all parties. This is unnecessary and confusing, so our recommendation is
to use the approved symbol alongside the alias favoured by the author in
the title and/ or abstract and to use the favourite symbol (preferably the
approved one) in the rest of the paper. http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/users/hester/Radresedit.html |