Subject: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10051
Dear Sergio,
We are currently curating the abstracts for the upcoming 45th
(Washington DC) Annual Drosophila Research Conference, for FlyBase.
I am writing in connection with your abstract:
Cloning and characteriztion of DmMNF: A new transcription factor of the fork
head family in Drosophila melanogaster.
You mention a gene symbol that is new to FlyBase, Mnf (we drop the DM,
see copy mailing below explaining why). Do you know which of the
Genome Project CG annotations your gene corresponds to? All the CGs
have corresponding gene records in FlyBase already and we don't like to
make duplicate records for what is actually the same gene unless we
can't avoid it. I'm wondering whether it might be CG11799? We have
EP3428 as an allele of CG11799....
With best wishes,
Rachel.
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Rachel Drysdale, Ph.D.
FlyBase (Cambridge),
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Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila
Subject: Nomenclature
=============
Dear Colleagues,
We are writing with a suggestion about the nomenclature of Drosophila
genes.
It is now routine that a D. melanogaster gene is identified on the
basis of sequence homology with (or more rarely, functional
complementation for) a gene from another organism such as a yeast or a
vertebrate. Authors often prefix these Drosophila versions with 'D' or 'd'
for Drosophila, or 'Dm' for D. melanogaster. However in the absence of a
unifying pan-biological system of genetic nomenclature, to haphazardly
use 'D' or 'd' or 'Dm' is actually counterproductive. Think of Danio,
Dictyostelium, Daphnia magna .... there is room for confusion.
FlyBase uses a defined system of prefixes for denoting species other
than D. melanogaster. Examples are 'Dvir\' for D. virilis, 'Dsim\' for D.
simulans, etc. Examples of gene symbols are Dvir\Adh1 and Dsim\per
(see flybase/Documents/nomenclature/species-abbreviations.txt for full
listing of species abbreviations). We have not explicitly listed
melanogaster genes with the prefix 'Dmel\' since we consider that to be
implicit. However we would like to suggest that when meaning to
distinguish between a vertebrate gene and its Drosophila version that
would otherwise have the same symbol, authors prefix the symbol with
'Dmel\'. 'D', 'd', or 'Dm' ought NOT to be used as a prefix to a
D. melanogaster gene symbol \- this is a long-standing convention, having
been made explicit by Lindsley and Zimm in the 1992 edition of the Red
Book.
FlyBase
============
Subject: Re: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10051
Dear Rachel,
i have just read your e-mail, Mnf corresponds to CG11799, and Ep3428 is an
allele of CG11799, the gene that we are studing (CG11799) is the most
homolog to vertebrate MNF and that is the reason because we named it
'DmMNF'.
So, to avoid duplications, note that both CG11799 (Ep3428) and Mnf refers to
the same gene.
We didn't know anything about the new nomenclature, in the future, we will
avoid the 'Dm'
Best wishes.
Sergio