The 11th HUGO Human Genome Meeting, HGM2006, will be held from 31st May to 3rd June 2006 in Helsinki, Finland.
Members of the HGNC and MGNC will be attending this meeting, so please come and see us in our booth to discuss gene nomenclature or other issues.

A joint HGNC and HGVS (Human Genome Variation Society) meeting will be held on 31st May as a satellite meeting of HGM2006.
Following the interest raised by our last Hot Topic (variable copy number gene nomenclature) the focus of the side meeting will be on copy number variation, with invited speakers John Armour (UK), Evan Eichler (USA) and Xavier Estivill (Spain).

Registration for the side-meeting is free, however priority will be given to those who are attending HGM2006 and there are a limited number of places available. If you are interested in attending please go to the side-meeting website where you can register; we also welcome submission of abstracts on the general topic of gene copy number variation.
(http://abstracts.hgvs.org/Helsinki/)

snoRNA Nomenclature Proposal

The HGNC has proposed a unified nomenclature system for the small nucleolar RNAs and the small Cajal body-specific RNAs. The proposal can be found at the following link:
www.genenames.org/genefamily/ snoRNA/proposal.html

Please email hgnc@genenames.org with your comments on the snoRNA proposal.

This month we are launching a new Hot Topic on the nomenclature of non-coding RNAs of unknown function.

It is now recognised that the number of genuine RNAs which are non-coding and for which there is no functional information is enormous. They are sometimes referred to as 'TUFs', transcripts of unknown function. Currently HGNC is not routinely naming these objects as there is no standard nomenclature scheme.

However, a few authors have recently requested symbols for particular TUFs of interest. One suggestion is to have the non-coding equivalent of a C$orf# symbol, where $ equals the chromosome number and # the next TUF in the series (e.g. C$tuf#). Another suggestion is the root symbol TUF#. Such symbols would be placeholders which would be expected to change when more about the function of the transcript is known.

Please follow the link to our Hot Topic for more information on the proposal, and email your comments and suggestions to us at: hgnc@genenames.org

Publications

Nusbaum C...Sneddon TP et al. DNA Sequence and Analysis of Human Chomosome 8. Nature. 2006. 439:331-335 PMID:16421571

Eyre TA, Ducluzeau F, Sneddon TP, Povey S, Bruford EA, Lush MJ. The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Database, 2006 updates. Nucleic Acids Res. 2006. 1;34 (Database issue):D319-21. PMID:16381876