Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference

C7

THE PLANT GENE NOMENCLATURE DATABASE

Department of Molecular Genetics, John Innes Centre, Norwich NR4, 7UH, UK.

MENDEL is the "Plant Gene Nomenclature" database operated by a European office of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology's Commission on Plant Gene Nomenclature at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK). The aims of the project are to develop a common nomenclature for sequenced genes in all photosynthetic organisms, the organelle genomes of both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic organisms (fungi, algae and protozoa) and plant viruses.The implementation of a common system of gene nomenclature stems from the burgeoning use of idiosyncratic and conflicting names for plant genes that give little or no information about gene function. It can only be advantageous for the scientific community as a whole to share a common genetic language.As well as developing a common nomenclature and representing a repository for this information, MENDEL aims to develop tools to facilitate the retrieval of coding sequence data from the sequence databases and subsequent direct analysis using the analysis tools available on the Internet. Thus, the information within MENDEL and continued development of associated tools will provide a most useful resource for the molecular biology community as a whole.