Subject: re: gene designations in Neurospora-changes?

From: [email-masked] (Dan Ebbole)
Date: 11 Apr 1995 11:28:31 -0700

Thanks Peter for getting this discussion going.  I'll argue with you.

>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.
>

Yeast is more widely studied and more familiar to general audiences, even
non-fungal audiences.  A broad range of people must become familiar with
the yeast system of gene designations.  If N. crassa has the same system it
will simply be easier for people to read N. crassa papers, that's all.

>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.
>
This is a very good point.  

>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

I doubt that many people would be confused, unfortunately.
------------------------
Dr. Daniel Ebbole
[email-masked]
Dept. of Plant Pathology and Microbiology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-2132