Recommended Nomenclature Instructions to Authors

Below is the information we would suggest you include in the “Instructions to Authors” section of your journal:

Authors should use approved gene nomenclature where this is available.

For vertebrate genes, please use symbols approved by the relevant species specific nomenclature committee (listed below) or the Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC). A list of the species the VGNC currently approves nomenclature for can be found at the species list page labelled as “Full gene set”, and approved nomenclature can be queried at vertebrate.genenames.org. Authors proposing novel gene nomenclature are encouraged to contact the relevant nomenclature committee or the VGNC prior to publication. Please note that wherever possible orthologs of human genes should follow that of the human ortholog. The VGNC can be contacted via their website request form or by contacting:

Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC)
Cambridge Blood Donor Centre,
Long Road,
Cambridge,
Cambridgeshire
CB2 0PT,
United Kingdom

e-mail: vgnc@genenames.org.

Please note that all prepublication data will be treated confidentially if requested.
The species listed below all have gene nomenclature committees. Please use the nomenclature they have approved by searching for gene symbols at the following links:

Mouse: http://www.informatics.jax.org
Rat: http://rgd.mcw.edu
Chicken: http://birdgenenames.org/cgnc/
Xenopus: http://www.xenbase.org
Zebrafish: http://zfin.org
Drosophila: http://flybase.org
C. elegans: http://www.wormbase.org
Arabidopsis: http://www.arabidopsis.org
Yeast: http://www.yeastgenome.org

The following paragraph of background information can be included where desired:

The Veretbrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC) is responsible for approving and implementing unique gene symbols and names in selected vertebrate species that do not have a dedicated gene nomenclature committee. The VGNC works closely with other nomenclature groups, model organism databases and gene family experts. Considerable efforts are made to approve symbols acceptable to workers in the field, but sometimes it is not possible to use exactly what has previously appeared in the literature. In such cases the previously used symbols are listed as synonyms for the approved nomenclature in the VGNC database and NCBI Gene, to allow retrieval of all the information available for each gene.