Hi Naoto, Yes, I can agree to the name “torsin”. Kevin Dr Kevin Moffat Neurosciences School of Life Sciences University of Warwick -- Dear Naoto It is fine with Dr. Laurie Ozelius and myself to change the name of the torsin gene in Drosophila from torp4a to torsin. Best Xandra Xandra O. Breakefield, PhD Molecular Neurogenetics Unit Massachusetts General Hospital-East -- Dear Naoto, We only routinely consider peer-reviewed research papers when naming a gene in FlyBase, and we usually go by chronological precedence if there are competing gene symbols/names. This is the reason why we can't simply rename genes without considering relevant, previously published papers. Of the four research papers attached to the 'torp4a' gene in FlyBase, you only need concern yourself with 2 of them in which 'torp4a' is specifically studied and is referred to as 'Torp4'/'Torp4a'/'torp4a': FBrf0136710 == Ozelius et al., 1999, Genomics 62(3): 377--384 FBrf0195378 == Muraro and Moffat, 2006, J. Neurobiol. 66(12): 1338--1353 You should contact the corresponding authors of these 2 papers to see if you can reach a consensus on what the 'official' FlyBase symbol for this gene should be. If you do reach a consensus to change the FlyBase symbol, we would drop the 'd' from your proposed 'dtorsin', as I presume this denotes 'Drosophila' and FlyBase never includes such prefixes in our official gene symbols. We would also capitalize the initial letter as the gene is being named based on orthology (rather than a recessive Drosophila phenotype). That is, the FlyBase symbol would be 'Torsin'. Do let us know if you reach a consensus with the other two labs. We will then be able to change the gene symbol to 'Torsin'. Steven Marygold FlyBase -- Dear FlyBase, Our group has been working on the gene, torp4a. This gene was originally described by our group and named as torp4a, since it was homologous to mammalian TOR1A, TOR1B, TOR2A, and TOR3A. We have recently created null-alleles of torp4a and published a paper in PLoS ONE. “dtorsin, the Drosophila ortholog of the early-onset dystonia TOR1A (DYT1), plays a novel role in dopamine metabolism” http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026183. Since this gene is the only torsin-related gene in Drosophila and functionally conserved to the mammalian TOR1A gene as we have shown in this paper, we think it is more appropriate to call this gene we as "dtorsin". Could you change the gene name from "torp4a" to "dtorsin" in flybase? Thank you very much, Best Regards, Naoto Ito
