Board Thread:Genes Concept Help/@comment-26399646-20150730171731

Hey Mark2Curators!

I thought I'd post a piece of information here that might help everyone discern between gene names (highlight!) vs gene mutations (don't highlight) more quickly. In research papers the standard notation for a mutation in the DNA sequence or the protein sequence is to write it as "LETTER-POSITION NUMBER-LETTER", usually there are 2-3 numbers in the middle:

Ex. M694V, R408Q, A72E, P32Q, A566C

(What this is saying in the case of M694V is that there is a Valine amino acid (V) at position number 694 where there is usually a Methionine amino acid (M))

The best way to know if something is a gene name is to search for it in a gene name database, but if you also know what the mutation notation looks like you can rule out those abbreviations pretty quick!

Cheers, Skye 