Grapevine gene nomenclature system

A major breakthrough in grapevine genomics was achi eved in 2007 with the sequencing of the Vitis vinifera cv. PN40024 genome. Subsequently, invaluable data relat ed to the structural and functional characterization of the g enes accumulated exponentially. Unfortunately, data that were acquired prior to the genome release are largely under- exploited. Furthermore, because of heterogeneous so urces these data remain often incompatible but also decentralized storage is maki ng retrieval more difficult. Classically, a large amount of useful data describing gene functio ns only appeared in printed articles describing experiments carried out to answer specif ic questions. These data remain inaccessible for automatic text mining. High throug hput “omics” data are typically stored in public repositories, but generally are confined to their initial aim. With the objective of providing a high quality and highly accessible anno tation of grapevine genes, the International Grapevine Genome Project (IGGP) commi ssioned an international Super- nomenclature Committee for Grape Gene Annotation to coordinate the expert-annotation effort of the grapevine genes. The goal of the comm ittee is to provide a standard nomenclature for locus identifiers and to define co nventions for a gene naming system. Using previous experience acquired on similar initi atives for other plant species such as Arabidopsis , rice and tomato, a versatile system was implement ed anticipating on future developments and issues. Specific emphasis has focu sed on directions for the expert annotators by: (i) providing a clearly-identified c ommon annotation platform that also enables community-based gene curation (ii) emphasiz ing a gene naming scheme reflecting the biological features of gene products, (iii) and using a genetic ontology consistent with other organisms to facilitate evolutionary comparis on of genes.