From: Eric Haag <ehaag@wam.umd.edu>
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2002 10:20:14 PM US/Pacific
To: Paul Sternberg <pws@caltech.edu>
Subject: Re: nomenclature

Paul,

Curious you should bring this up, as we just got our first alleles (Tras and Dpy and 1 Rol) a couple weeks ago and had just contacted Jonathan about this subject. I proposed to him that we try the following: Give briggsae mutants the same phenotypic code as in elegans, but until the gene is cloned have its postfix be a LETTER. If there are more than 26 genes in a phenotypic class, we either add more letters or mix letters and numbers. After it's cloned though, it should be renamed with the appropriate number if a clear orthologue exists. Thus I would suggest that the whole name of my mutant would be Cb-tra-a or Cb-tra-b. Then if Cb-tra-a turns out to be the clear homologue of Ce-tra-2, it becomes Cb-tra-2 For genes first studied as sequences, unambiguous orthologues would start life with the number of their elegans homologues, as they do now.

I think this system conveys as much or more information than any alternate scheme, while simultaneously avoiding false similarities that would be a huge confustion.

That is my $.02--thanks for asking.

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
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