As per Paul's request, and in accord with Leon's preference, here's an
example from my lab:
We are provisionally calling our uncloned briggsae tra alleles
Cb-tra(nm__), where "nm__" is our lab-specific allele code and allele
number, as has been suggested by others.   In the case where we suspect we
have multiple alleles of a single uncloned gene, we like the idea of using
letters as provisional place-holders, e.g. Cb-tra-a(nm9).  Alleles later
shown to be mutations in already-described orthologues of elegans tra genes
would be converted, e.g. to Cb-tra-1(nm2), but others would retain their
letter.   This enables us to accomodate without confusion genes with no
clear elegans homologue, or a homologue that isn't sex-related in elegans.

Eric

                                          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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