Are there naming conventions for genes?

Question

If so, how can I learn more about the way scientists go about naming genes?

Answer 1

One of the immediate-early oncogenes was named "jun" by Curran, who discovered it. It was named after his technician June Sonnenberg. (I knew her - before she got famous!)



There were many tyrosine kinases that were discovered through homology cloning. Many many many. One of them was named "jak", which was an acronym for "just another kinase". It turned out to be a rather important one.



So the only convention is that the gene is lower case and consists of three letters "fos" (or, hmmm, c-fos actually) and the protein, or enzyme, is capitalized: Fos.



But that was during the wise guy heyday of gene naming. Genes were named short and sweet so you could fit lots of names into drawings. Lots of genes have long names. And there is a long long big and very serious treatise on gene naming convenctions: http://www.gem.re.kr/CMR2/db_assignmentextver2.shtml

http://www.ciliate.org/help/gene_naming.shtml



The names are one thing when it is in the laboratory, very informal, and then it gets more and more formal as you register in GenBank and publish so you can all be sure you are talking about the same thing. But still quite anarchistic.

Answer 2

This is a complicated and interesting subject. There are conventions, but they're not always followed.



The first convention is they are named after the phenotype. For example, the fruit fly gene scarlet results in red eyes when deleted, but actually codes for a brown pigment.



If they are the causative gene of a genetic disorder, they are often named after it. In humans the Shwachman-Bodian-Diamond Syndrome gene, (SBDS) is the one that causes the aforementioned disease when nonfunctional.



They also often simply naming the gene after the protein that has already been discovered such as hemoglobin.



Sometimes they get whimsical, especially in fruit flies. Tinman results in no heart developing. Grim and Reaper are apoptosis genes.



They are other descriptive names. Genderblind makes flies bisexual and fruitless makes the males gay.



It is basically up to the discoverer of its function to name the gene.

Answer 3

Good question! The conventions differ, depending on the organism. See the links below, or Google "naming genes" (or similar terms) and go from there.