Thread by @ucdmrt

Who the hell is naming these proteins? #science

https://twitter.com/biorxivpreprint/status/1332372448659058690

🚨Update🚨
Apparently the protein was 1st published in Feb. 1998 by Wolff et al,they called it "Strabismus", a condition which “a disorder of vision due to a deviation from normal orientation of one or both eyes” and is the medical term for ‘cross-eyed’"

bit.ly/3mmBrMU

Another group published the same protein in September of same year (1998) and called it Van Gogh for whatever reason. A footnote was added which said "We have determined that Van Gogh is allelic to strabismus"

genetics.org/content/150/1/…

This protein was originally studied in Drosophila (important) and the group to publish it first termed it Strabismus. However, for whatever reason, orthologs (ie. in human) of the gene were called "Van Gogh like" instead of "Strabismus" or "Strabismus like" 🤔

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabismu…

Strabismus in humans:
uniprot.org/uniprot/Q8TAA9
uniprot.org/uniprot/Q9ULK5

Apparently gene names are determined/approved by the "HUGO gene nomenclature committee" @genenames @humangenomeorg . References for Vangl1/Vangl2 in the official HGNC website cite later papers but emit the original 1998 paper that termed it Strabismus: genenames.org/data/gene-symb…

So what goes into consideration when naming newly described genes and proteins @genenames @humangenomeorg ? We need to get to the bottom of this very important matter 😁 #science #proteins #proteomics #genetics #genenames