Dear all,

I  was just about to reply with the same concern and suggestion that
Jonathan has articulated so well.  His plan [using allele numbers until the
identity is known] will also prevent the generation of odd gaps in the
elegans gene numbering scheme, which woud be required should a new elegans
locus be discovered after naming of briggsae alleles begins.  For example,
using dpy-32 for briggsae then requires a new elegans dpy to skip this
number, which could be confusing.

One issue still unresolved is what to do with large gene families with
ambigous orthology assignments.  In these cases some version of Paul's
suggestion may be necessary, as using identical numbers implies clear
orthology.  Thoughts?

Regards,

Eric Haag

                                          Eric S. Haag, Ph.D.        ~
  Assistant Professor                                   ~
  Department of Biology                               ~ ~
  University of Maryland
  College Park, MD  20742               ~                       ~   ~
  phone:  (301) 405-8534 	fax:  (301) 314-9358        ehaag@wam.umd.edu
 http://www.life.umd.edu/biology/faculty/haag/index.html	  ~         ~
                                    "I'd rather be here now."
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