Introducing the Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC)

Standardised gene nomenclature provides an essential resource for all researchers. However, an ever-increasing number of vertebrate genomes are being sequenced and the data released into the public domain without any systematic annotation or gene naming. There are only six vertebrate model organisms with an established gene nomenclature committee (mouse, rat, chicken, Anolis, Xenopus and zebrafish), all of which base their gene names on those approved by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) for human genes. The Vertebrate Nomenclature Committee (VGNC) is a new initiative that extends the remit of the HGNC to approve consistent gene names and symbols across vertebrates. Our naming strategy for each vertebrate species starts by identifying a high confidence set of genes with 1:1 human orthologs using our HCOP tool (http://www.genenames.org/cgi-bin/hcop), which aggregates orthology predictions from multiple sources. These 1:1 orthologs are named in a semi-automated manner, with the human gene nomenclature being transferred to the orthologous gene. Genes with non-consensus orthologs, members of complex gene families, pseudogenes and RNA genes require additional manual curation. Our prototype species for VGNC naming has been chimpanzee and we have already named over 10K protein-coding chimp genes with a 1:1 human ortholog. During this process we have taken the opportunity to improve the consistency of our names and taken care to minimise transfer of species-specific information. This naming process will soon be expanded to other species, including dog and cow. An online vertebrate gene nomenclature portal has been created that stores, displays and makes this new nomenclature data accessible both to individual researchers and available for dissemination to other resources including Ensembl and NCBI Gene. Further information and requests for individual vertebrate gene names and symbols can be made via: http://www.genenames.org.