I keep coming across a variety of genes (abbrevited for reasons I don't know or otherwise), and I keep wondering what these letters stand for. If I correctly understand, the HesC gene abbreviation stands for "Human embryonic stem cell" gene. That's nice and all, but I'm wondering if any of you know a decent database where I can find maybe more detail about these various three letter, four-letter.. #-letter genes I keep coming across. First and foremost, I'm trying to figure out what these abbreviations mean if there is an abbreviation, and perhaps some historical knowledge about these various genes, such as Blimp1.

 

Anyone know where I can find a database or some databases that discuss these details?

Not all of the genes have meaningful name. The first to assign a function generally can give them any name they want (though nowadays people cross-reference it to the ORF name, if a genome sequence is available). Other than that you should just check the regular databases as swissprot (for proteins) or Genbank, in which the full name is sometimes deposited.

 

Blimp1 stands for B lymphocyte-induced maturation protein, btw. and is also called PRDM1 (Positive regulatory domain) as it binds to the PRDI (positive regulatory domain I element) of its target gene.

Not all of the genes have meaningful name. The first to assign a function generally can give them any name they want (though nowadays people cross-reference it to the ORF name, if a genome sequence is available). Other than that you should just check the regular databases as swissprot (for proteins) or Genbank, in which the full name is sometimes deposited.

 

Blimp1 stands for B lymphocyte-induced maturation protein, btw. and is also called PRDM1 (Positive regulatory domain) as it binds to the PRDI (positive regulatory domain I element) of its target gene.

 

Alright, those are some possibilities.

Thank you very much, CharonY.

 

This also works: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene

 

I'm not sure if it is part of Genbank, though.

 

I was not thinking about the transcription->translation-> protein aspect of things; but surely, the function of the protein (if not acquiring the semantic reasoning behind the naming of the gene) is important.

 

Thanks for the input.