New Website URL

Our new website, www.genenames.org, is now live and we encourage people to update their bookmarks and links. This website will run in parallel with www.genenames.org/ until August 1st. After this date users will be actively redirected to www.genenames.org. We also have a new email address and would like to ask people to start using hgnc"at"genenames.org. In addition most of our CGI scripts (such as searchgenes.pl) have been renamed. Details are provided at www.genenames.org/help.html.

Meetings Attended

Biology of Genomes
Elspeth and Matt attended the 20th Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) annual meeting on genome science, The Biology of Genomes, which ran from May 8-12th. They presented a poster on gene nomenclature across species, highlighting the need for gene nomenclature initiatives for the many new mammalian genomes now being sequenced. They also enjoyed meeting with Mary Shimoyama of RGD (Rat Genome Database) to discuss increasing coordination between the HGNC and RGNC (Rat Genome and Nomenclature Committee). Overall it was a stimulating and productive meeting and we look forward to attending again in future years.

Cardiovascular Science & Medicine Day
Ruth attended the Cardiovascular Science & Medicine day at UCL (University College London) on May 16th. Ruth and Varsha will be following up on the many cardiovascular-related genes, suggested at this meeting, in need of GO annotation.

HGVS
Sue and Tam both attended the Human Genome Variation Society meeting in Montreal, Canada on May 21st and gave presentations entitled 'The TSC2 mutation database displayed on the NCBI genome browser; a pilot sudy' and 'Accounting for copy number variation: A hierarchical database structure' respectively.

The latter talk, in response to a copy number variant (CNV) gene nomenclature Hot Topic, outlined the HGNC's recent implementation of a hierarchical database structure to capture and represent information concerning genomic variation such as CNV genes. Our hierarchical database structure will be public by the end of the year. If you have a CNV gene submission please complete our online gene symbol request form, specifying the CNV status in the additional  comments and information field.

HGM2007
Sue, Elspeth, Matt and Tam attended the 12th HUGO Human Genome Meeting, HGM2007 in Montreal, Canada, May 21-24th. The HGNC team presented 2 posters and Matt gave a presentation entitled 'If we could talk to the animals'. The HGNC also shared a booth with Stan Laulederkind of RGD, where we welcomed researchers with queries about gene nomenclature.

The HGNC poster prizes were awarded to Shantanu Chowdhury, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi for the identification and analysis of G-quadruplex DNA in mammalian promoters (Poster 215) and Paulina M. Wojnarowicz, McGill University, Montreal for an ovarian cancer transcriptome map of chromosome 17 and the identification of potential tumour suppressor genes (Poster 51). Paulina received a year's subscription to Nature Genetics; Shantanu received a year's subscription to Nature Reviews Genetics. Many thanks to the Nature Publishing Group for their continued support of these prizes.

Gene Ontology (GO)

Varsha is now involved in the AmiGO working group, which aims to improve the AmiGO browser. Ruth is involved in the development of the GO in the blood pressure regulation domain and consequently attended a blood pressure regulation GO development workshop in Milwaukee, June 25-26th. These new terms are likely to be made public later this year.

New Alpha Tubulin Nomenclature

An essential component of microtubules, alpha tubulin is a multi-gene family in many species. Due to incomplete genome builds and the high degree of sequence similarity between members of this family, historically, it had not been possible to assign an orthologous nomenclature to this gene family.  A collaborative effort initiated by the HGNC, and including the MGNC, RGD and several scientists working on alpha tubulins, has resulted in a new orthologous nomenclature being assigned to the human, mouse and rat alpha tubulin gene family. The new nomenclature can be found on the tubulin gene family page and is detailed in the following publication:

Khodiyar VK, Maltais LJ, Sneddon KM, Smith JR, Shimoyama M, Cabral F, Dumontet C, Dutcher SK, Harvey RJ, Lafanechère L, Murray JM, Nogales E, Piquemal D, Stanchi F, Povey S and Lovering RC. A revised nomenclature for the human and rodent alpha-tubulin gene family. Genomics. 2007 May 31; [Epub ahead of print]. PMID:17543498.