NOMENCLATURE FOR NAMING LOCI, ALLELES, LINKAGE GROUPS AND CHROMOSOMESTO BE USED IN POULTRY GENOME PUBLICATIONS AND DATABASES

The Second International Workshop on Poultry Genome Mapping, meeting a t the 1994 Conference of the International Society for Animal Genetics , and the Poultry Committee of the USDA National Animal Genome Researc h Program have approved a new set of guidelines for poultry gene and a llele symbols to replace the guidelines published previously. The new guidelines are a modification of the human gene nomenclature guideline s and are designed to facilitate the naming of loci detected by molecu lar probes and electronic publication in on-line databases. Authors an d journal editors are strongly encouraged to adopt the new nomenclatur e guidelines. Comments and suggestions are welcome. The complete text of the guidelines can be accessed on the World Wide Web. The home page addresses are: /www.ri.bbsrc.ac.uk/chickmap/ChickMapHomePage.html for the ChickMap home page, Roslin Institute, UK and http://poultry.mph.m su.edu/ for the Department of Microbiology, Michigan State University, USA. The home pages will contain updates and changes in the guideline s. The home pages also provide access to CHICKBASE, a chicken genome d atabase, which will have a listing of old and new gene symbols. A Worl d Wide Web browser is required for access. The guidelines can also be obtained from LB Crittenden (e-mail: slcritte@facstaff.wisc.edu). The International Poultry Gene Nomenclature Committee comprises the author s of this letter to the editor.