Subject: Re: FlyBase Query (cy1009)
Dear Chihiro,
Thanks for your message. I like your suggestion to take rept for reptin and
pont for pontin.
Personal communication of Jacques Pradel to Flybase:
I am writing about the symbols to be used in Flybase for the Drosophila
genes reptin and pontin (Bauer et al. 2000, EMBO J. 19, 6121-6130). We did
not taken rep and pon since these symbols are already used for Rab escort
protein (Dong et al., 1999, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1449, 194-198) and
partner of numb (Lu et al. 2000, Cell 95, 225-235), respectively. Instead
of 'dpon' and 'drep', which does not obey the Flybase policy to drop any
prefixes denoting Drosophila and has unevenly been used in the EMBO paper,
I suggest Flybase to adopt the symbols 'rept' and 'pont' for 'reptin' and
'pontin', respectively.
Thanks again and best wishes,
Jacques
At  18:21  24/01/01 \+0000, you wrote:
>Dear Dr Pradel,
>
>I am currently curating your paper for FlyBase:
>
>Bauer et al., 2000, EMBO J. 19(22): 6121--6130
>
>I have a question about the symbols you gave to your new Drosophila
>genes, pontin and reptin.
>
>In your paper you either used the symbols drep and dpon or rep and
>pon. I assume the 'd' denotes 'drosophila'. In FlyBase we have the
>policy of dropping any prefixes denoting Drosphila when assigning
>FlyBase symbols. I append an old posting from Thom Kaufman explaining
>this policy.
>
>This leave the symbols rep and pon. Unfortunately the symbols Rep and
>pon are already being used as FlyBase symbols. I hope you agree that
>this is potentially very confusing.
>
>Rep
>Rab escort protein
>CG8432
>FBrf0114616 == Dong, 1998.11.7, GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ: AF105063
>FBrf0108170 == Dong et al., 1999, Biochim. biophys. Acta 1449(2): 194--198
>
>pon
>partner of numb
>CG3346
>FBrf0105275 == gm5411.h == Lu et al., 1998, Cell 95(2): 225--235
>FBrf0117559 == Lu, 1998.9.10, GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ: AF091050
>
>Although the (differently capitalised) symbols rep and Pon are not
>taken, given the modern convention of capitalising the first letter
>when referring to the gene products, we try to avoid having symbols
>using the same letters but differently capitalised.
>
>So I writing to ask you whether you would consider changing the symbol
>you use to describe the pontin and reptin genes. At the moment the two
>genes have the FlyBase symbols 'pontin' and 'reptin', i.e. their
>FlyBase gene names and their FlyBase gene symbols are the same. The
>choice of new symbol is, of course, yours, but two symbols that I have
>checked we do not have already are 'Pont' and 'Rept'. Whatever the
>FlyBase symbol becomes the symbols 'pon' and 'rep' will be recorded in
>FlyBase as being aliases, so anyone reading your EMBO Journal paper
>will be able to find the genes based on their symbol.
>
>Could you email me to confirm your choice of symbol, I would archive
>this email as a personal communication from you to FlyBase so that we
>know why the symbols were chosen.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Chihiro
>
Jacques Pradel
Laboratoire de Genetique et Physiologie du Developpement
IBDM, case 907
Campus de Luminy
13288 Marseille Cedex 9
FRANCE