Quick Guide to Gene Nomenclature

The complete guidelines,for gene, variant, and allele nomenclature can be found at http://rgd.mcw.edu/nomen_rules.html

A gene symbol should:

· be unique within the species and should not match a symbol in another species that is not a homolog,

· use the same symbol whenever possible for orthologs among human, mouse and rat,

· be short, normally 3-5 characters, and not more than 10 characters,

· use only Roman letters and Arabic numbers,

· begin with an uppercase letter (not a number), followed by all lowercase letters / numbers (see exception below),

· not include tissue specificity or molecular weight designations,

· not include punctuation except for hyphens to separate related sequence (rs) and pseudogene (ps) from the root symbol,

· ideally have the same initial letter as the initial letter of its gene name,

· use a common stem or root symbol when belonging to a gene family; family member numbers or subunit designations should be placed at the end of the gene symbol,

· be italicized in published articles although, because they may be difficult to read, depending on the browser, gene symbols are frequently not italicized when posted to a web page.

A gene name should:

· be specific and brief, conveying the character or function of the gene,

· begin with a lowercase letter, unless it is a person’s name or is a typically capitalized word,

· use American spelling,

· not contain punctuation, except where necessary to separate the main part of the name from modifiers,

· include the name of the species from which the ortholog/homolog name was derived at the end of the name in parentheses only when that name is not in common usage,

· not include the word rat,

· follow the conventions of the established gene family if it is a recognizable member of that family by sequence comparison, structure (motifs/domains), and/or function,

· not contain potentially misleading information that may be experiment or assay specific, such as “kidney-specific” or “59 kDa”.

A splice variant from a single locus should:

· be differentiated by the addition of an underscore v and a serial number (_v#) to the symbol and the addition of a comma “variant” and serial number to the name.