Subject: gene designations in Neurospora-changes?

From: [email-masked] (David H. Griffin)
Date: 12 Apr 1995 14:12:59 GMT

For further excellent discussion of gene symbols and other terminology 
for fungal genetics, I recommend reading the following:

Yoder, O. C., B. Valent and F. Chumley.  1986.  Genetic nomenclature and 
practice for plant pathogenic fungi.  Phytopathology 76: 383-385.
                                  
David H. Griffin               
Department of Environmental &
    Forest Biology
350 Illick Hall
College of Environmental         
    Science and Forestry        
One Forestry Drive
Syracuse NY 13210-2788         
e-mail: [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Peter Margolis)
Date: 11 Apr 1995 09:38:02 -0700

My personal bias is against major changes in the Neurospora gene
designations, for several reasons:

1. Changing things to be consistent with yeast seems like buying into the
idea that yeast is really the only reasonable system (cf. "the one true
organism"). I would argue that current Neurospora usage is appropriately
consistent with Aspergillus.

2. The caps/lower case distinction in yeast is between dominant and
recessive alleles. We could apply the same approach to Neurospora, but this
ignores heterokaryons, internuclear complementation, different nuclear
ratios, etc., aspects of Neurospora that make the definition of dominance a
little more complex.

3. Suddenly changing designations seems like it would create confusion for
the future, especially for DNA sequences and papers already entered onto
the databases. Even if we are employing a historical artifact, we can a
least be consistent about it. If anything, I would suggest dropping the "-"
in the gene names; I find it personally annoying and I know that some
find/search programs on the computer don't recognize the dash as a valid
character (e.g. no distinction seen between the designations cot-1, cot-2
and cot).

-Peter Margolis

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McBain