Plant Genome III Conference

NOMENCLATURE OF SEQUENCED PLANT GENES: STRUCTURE, ORGANIZATION AND CHALLENGES IN CONSTRUCTING, MARKETING AND COMMUNICATING THE DATABASES ENCOMPASSING THEM.

1. Waksman Institute, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855-0759, USA;
2. Cambridge Laboratory, John Innes Centre, Norwich NR4 7UJ, UK;
3. Department of Biochemistry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1319, USA.

In 1991 the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology organized a Commission on Plant Gene Nomenclature. The objectives of this commission are threefold:

* to coordinate working groups of experts to provide designations for

sequenced plant genes that encode similar products across the plant

kingdom; * to collect and collate information on sequenced plant genes from the

EMBL Library/GenBank databases and to distribute selected fields to

the working groups; and finally; * to communicate the approved designations via hardcopy and public

databases to the scientific public.

This workshop will address topics that relate to the structure of components of the nomenclature, how an individual working group tackles the responsibility of assigning designations, problems inherent in defining nomenclature across multiple genomes, the design of databases to assure precision in reporting the recommended nomenclature, and the adoption of new terminology into everyday usage by the scientific public.