HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee

HGNC

Content
Description	HGNC is responsible for approving unique symbols and names for human loci, including protein coding genes, RNA genes and pseudogenes, to allow unambiguous scientific communication.
Data types captured	Gene nomenclature
Organisms	Human
Contact
Research center	EMBL-EBI, UK;
Primary citation	Gray & al. (2015)
Access
Website	www.genenames.org www.genenames.org/news
Download URL	Statistics & Downloads Custom Downloads HGNC Biomart
Web service URL	rest.genenames.org
Tools
Web	HGNC Comparison of Orthology Predictions, Symbol report search
Miscellaneous
Curation policy	Yes

The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) is a committee of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) that sets the standards for human gene nomenclature. The HGNC approves a unique and meaningful name for every known human gene, based on a query of experts. In addition to the name, which is usually 1 to 10 words long, the HGNC also assigns a symbol (a short group of characters) to every gene. As with an SI symbol, a gene symbol is like an abbreviation but is more than that, being a second unique name that can stand on its own just as much as substitute for the longer name. It may not necessarily "stand for" the initials of the name, although many gene symbols do reflect that origin.

Purpose

Especially gene abbreviations/symbols but also full gene names are often not specific for a single gene. A marked example is CAP which can refer to any of 6 different genes (BRD4, CAP1, LNPEP, PTPLA, SERPINB6, and SORBS1).

The HGNC short gene names, or gene symbols, unlike previously used or published symbols, are specifically assigned to one gene only. This can result in less common abbreviations being selected but reduces confusion as to which gene is referred to.

Naming guidelines

The HGNC summarises its approach to naming genes and assigning symbols (gene name abbreviations) as follows:

1. gene symbols must be unique
2. symbols should only contain Latin letters and Arabic numerals
3. symbols should not contain punctuation or "G" for gene
4. symbols do not contain any reference to the species they are encoded in, i.e. "H/h" for human

The full description of HGNC's nomenclature guidelines can be found on their web site [1]. HGNC advocates the appendices _v1, _v2,.. to distinguish between different splice variants and _pr1, _pr2,.. for promoter variants of a single gene.

HGNC also states that "gene nomenclature should evolve with new technology rather than be restrictive as sometimes occurs when historical and single gene nomenclature systems are applied."

Comprehensive human gene naming guidelines were last published in 2002, but the HGNC have subsequently issued guides to specific locus types such as endogenous retroviral loci, structural variants and non-coding RNAs.

Naming procedure

When assigning new gene nomenclature the HGNC make efforts to contact authors who have published on the human gene in question by email, and their responses to the proposed nomenclature are requested. HGNC also coordinates with the related Mouse and Rat Genomic Nomenclature Committees, other database curators, and experts for given specific gene families or sets of genes.

Revision

The gene name revision procedure is similar to the naming procedure, but changing a standardised gene name after establishment of a consensus can create confusion and the merit of this is therefore controversial. For this reason the HGNC aims to change a gene name only if agreement for that change can be reached among a majority of researchers working on that gene.

See also

• Human Genome Organisation (HUGO)
• Human Genome Project
• Human genome
• Gene
• Gene nomenclature

External links

• HGNC homepage
• HUGO homepage