{"id":1213,"date":"2015-02-04T12:23:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T12:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\/"},"modified":"2025-04-05T12:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T12:38:13","slug":"style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products","title":{"rendered":"Style tips for presenting genes and gene products"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Some points of style are simple and straightforward; others require some understanding of the subject matter, and genes and their products form one such case. \u2018Print the scientific names of species in italics\u2019 and \u2018Print all gene symbols in italics\u2019 are simple enough instructions, but gene nomenclature calls for something more, and this article is more an attempt to draw attention to the intricacies than to offer simple advice.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">One aspect of such intricacy is that the style conventions are different for different organisms. The nomenclature for human genes, for example, is governed by the International System for Human Gene Nomenclature. In most species, dominant genes take an initial capital letter whereas recessive genes are indicated by all lowercase letters (<em>Hs<\/em> \u2013 note the initial capital and italics \u2013 is the symbol for hairy sheath, a dominant gene in maize, whereas<em> sh<\/em> \u2013 note the lowercase \u2013 stands for shrunken endosperm, a recessive trait). This example also shows that it is not always possible to link the initial letters to specific words.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">To return to the conventions that differ with the groups of organisms: in yeasts, gene symbols are sequences of three italicized letters, capitals for dominant genes and lowercase for recessive genes, as in<em> MAL<\/em> for the gene involved in fermenting maltose and<em> gal<\/em> for that in fermenting galactose. Yeasts are fungi, but symbols for genes in other groups of fungi do not follow the above convention.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Then we have<em> loci<\/em> (plural of locus), which indicate different positions or locations of the same gene, and<em> alleles<\/em>, which are genes that have a common location on a given chromosome but result in different versions of the same trait following a mutation. Loci are indicated by superscript Arabic numbers in italics suffixed to the gene symbol whereas alleles are indicated by superscript lowercase letters, also affixed to the symbol.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Gene symbols are typically in italics whereas their products are printed in roman, or normal (non-italic) letters:<em> HD<\/em> for the (human) gene for huntingtin (a protein) or the Huntington disease gene; HD for Huntington disease.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">It should be apparent by now that gene and protein nomenclature is complex and not amenable to simple rules.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some points of style are simple and straightforward; others require some understanding of the subject matter, and genes and their products form one such case. \u2018Print the scientific names of species in italics\u2019 and \u2018Print all gene symbols in italics\u2019 are simple enough instructions, but gene nomenclature calls for something more, and this article is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":33313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2427],"tags":[2640,2611],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-style-format","tag-author-guidelines","tag-manuscript-formatting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Style tips for presenting genes and gene products | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Find tips on presenting genes and products of genes in this article. Gene nomenclature is fairly complex, and this article attempts to draw attention to its intricacies and provide some tips for authors.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Style tips for presenting genes and gene products | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Find tips on presenting genes and products of genes in this article. Gene nomenclature is fairly complex, and this article attempts to draw attention to its intricacies and provide some tips for authors.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Editage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-04T12:23:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-04-05T12:38:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products-resized_0.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"656\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"336\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Yateendra Joshi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Editage\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Editage\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Yateendra Joshi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Yateendra Joshi\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/#\/schema\/person\/cddcdcb60c05f8fe00b1e54c1ebf7980\"},\"headline\":\"Style tips for presenting genes and gene products\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-04T12:23:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-04-05T12:38:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\"},\"wordCount\":366,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/editage-insights-generic-banner_298.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Author Guidelines\",\"Manuscript Formatting\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Style &amp; Format\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products\",\"name\":\"Style tips for presenting genes and gene products | Editage Insights\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/style-tips-for-presenting-genes-and-gene-products#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/editage-insights-generic-banner_298.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-04T12:23:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-04-05T12:38:13+00:00\",\"description\":\"Find tips on presenting genes and products of genes in this article. 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