Dear colleagues,
I am writing to you about a nomenclature issue.
We have been working on a Drosophila gene CG8458 , also called Wnt8. It is a
distant member of the Wnt family, and not the Drosophila ortholog of the
vertebrate Wnt8 gene. We have generated a loss of function mutant and found
a phenotype indicating that this Wnt antagonizes Dorsal in Drosophila. We
intend therefore to term the gene wntD (wnt inhibitor of Dorsal). This name
reflects the function (which we describe for the first time), and the Wnt
homology and does not suggest orthology with any other Wnt. In the past, I
have been trying to keep the Wnt nomenclature such that numbers would
reflect an orthologous relationship (see the Wnt homepage,
http://www.stanford.edu/~rnusse/wntwindow.html)
The group of Tony Ip agrees with us and they have recently published a paper
on line in Development using the same nomenclature (Ganguly, A., Jiang, J.,
and Ip, Y. T. (2005). Drosophila WntD is a target and an inhibitor of the
Dorsal/Twist/Snail network in the gastrulating embryo.
We are now writing a paper. To get the nomenclature issue straightened out,
I contacted Rachel Drysdale. She does agree with the wntD name, after
consulting Kevin Cook, of the Nomenclature Committee, and Michael Ashburner.
However, she asked me to contact everyone who has published on the gene to
see whether they agree to use the wntD name.
This is what I a now doing. I hope to hear from you soon.
\-------------------------------------
Roel Nusse
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dept. of Developmental Biology
Stanford University, School of Medicine
Beckman Center, B271
279 Campus Drive
Stanford, CA 94305-5323
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Subject: Re: Nomenclature
Dear Roel,
I agree with the new nomenclature for Wnt8 (new name WntD).
regards
shashi
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L S Shashidhara Ph.D.
Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology
Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, INDIA
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Subject: Re: Nomenclature
THANKS FOR WRITING,SORRY I HAVE BEEN IN REMOTE SWEDISH WOODLAND.
ANYWAY YOUR PLAN SEEMS SENSIBLE TO ME, ALL THE BEST, PETER
\--
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Hills Rd.,
Cambridge CB2 2QH
UK
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Subject: RE: Nomenclature
Roel,
Change of name to wntD is fine with my lab.
Steve
\------------------------------------------------
Stephen Crews
Professor
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Department of Biochemistry/PMBB
CB#3280 Fordham Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
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Subject: FB Help Mail: 057 Gene data (problem or question)
comments: We recently published a paper in Development
Ganguly A, Jiang J, Ip YT. Drosophila WntD is a target and an inhibitor of
the Dorsal/Twist/Snail network in the gastrulating embryo. Development. 2005
Aug;132(15):3419-29. Epub 2005 Jun 29.
describing using the gene name wntD (lower case) to replace Wnt8 (CG8458).
The protein name should be WntD, stands for Wnt inhibitor of Dorsal. This was
agreed between our lab and Dr. Roel Nusse's lab at Stanford University (see
acknowledgement in the paper). They are in the process of publishing their
results. Please update this information in the flybase when appropriate.
realname: Tony Ip
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