PAG-IV Plant Genome IV Conference

Town & Country Conference Center, San Diego, CA, January, 1995.

W40
A Common Nomenclature for Sequenced Plant Genes: Update 1996

ELLEN M. REARDON(1), CARL A. PRICE(1), STEPHEN M. BECKSTROM-STERNBERG(2), WOLFGANG LOEFFELHARDT(3) and DAVID LONSDALE(4)
1. Waksman Institute, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855-0759, USA
2. Genome Informatics Group, National Agricultural Library, USDA, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA
3. Institut fur Biochemie und Molekulare Zellbiologie und Ludwig-Boltzmann-Forschungsstelle fur Biochemie, Universitaet Wien, A-1030, Vienna, Austria
4. John Innes Center, Cambridge Laboratory, Colney Lane, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7UJ, UK

The Commission on Plant Gene Nomenclature was organized in 1991 by the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology. The CPGN was challenged with the task of providing common nomenclature across the plant kingdom for genes encoding essentially the same product. Working groups of scientists with expertise in specific genes: light-harvesting proteins, tubulins, chitinases, amino acid pathways, for example, were recruited to identify designations most descriptive and appropriate with which to label the sets of genes in their category. More than fifty working groups have assembled mnemonics for more than four hundred plant-wide families of genes; these gene names are contained in Mendel, a CPGN database accessible at http://probe.nalusda.gov:8300/cgi-bin/browse/mendel. The success of the CPGN endeavor has led to the opening this year of a second office, this in Norwich, UK. Previous workshops have addressed the rationale employed by working groups in assigning gene names, the role of editorial boards in promoting the use of the new gene designations, and the retrieval of nomenclature from the World Wide Web. This workshop will address the topics of:

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