Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan 8;49(D1):D939-D946.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa980.

Genenames.org: the HGNC and VGNC resources in 2021

Susan Tweedie  1 , Bryony Braschi  1 , Kristian Gray  1 , Tamsin E M Jones  1 , Ruth L Seal  1   2 , Bethan Yates  1 , Elspeth A Bruford  1   2
Affiliations

Genenames.org: the HGNC and VGNC resources in 2021

Susan Tweedie et al. Nucleic Acids Res. .

Abstract

The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) based at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) assigns unique symbols and names to human genes. There are over 42,000 approved gene symbols in our current database of which over 19 000 are for protein-coding genes. While we still update placeholder and problematic symbols, we are working towards stabilizing symbols where possible; over 2000 symbols for disease associated genes are now marked as stable in our symbol reports. All of our data is available at the HGNC website https://www.genenames.org. The Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC) was established to assign standardized nomenclature in line with human for vertebrate species lacking their own nomenclature committee. In addition to the previous VGNC core species of chimpanzee, cow, horse and dog, we now name genes in cat, macaque and pig. Gene groups have been added to VGNC and currently include two complex families: olfactory receptors (ORs) and cytochrome P450s (CYPs). In collaboration with specialists we have also named CYPs in species beyond our core set. All VGNC data is available at https://vertebrate.genenames.org/. This article provides an overview of our online data and resources, focusing on updates over the last two years.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Screenshots showing new HGNC website features. (A) Screenshot of the left hand side of our ‘query all data’ page, with counts by data type. New facets for filtering data are boxed. (B) Examples of the top section of HGNC symbol reports displaying new symbol tags and curator notes (both indicated with arrows). (C) An example symbol report for a withdrawn entry with a new warning triangle (arrowed). Data previously absent from our symbol reports for withdrawn entries, in this case including a new curator comment (arrowed), is boxed.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
A series of screenshots illustrating the new VGNC Gene groups. The left hand panel shows a search result, the middle panel the result of filtering for ‘Group’ hits, and the right hand panel the top section of the selected Gene group report. Clicking on the boxed features allows navigation between the pages (as indicated by the arrows).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bruford E., Braschi B., Denny P., Jones T.E.M., Seal R.L., Tweedie S.. Guidelines for human gene nomenclature. Nat. Genet. 2020; 52:754–758. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Seal R.L., Chen L.L., Griffiths-Jones S., Lowe T.M., Mathews M.B., O’Reilly D., Pierce A.J., Stadler P.F., Ulitsky I., Wolin S.L., Bruford E.A.. A guide to naming human non-coding RNA genes. EMBO J. 2020; 39:e103777. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gray K.A., Seal R.L., Tweedie S., Wright M.W., Bruford E.A.. A review of the new HGNC gene family resource. Hum. Genomics. 2016; 10:6. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bult C.J., Blake J.A., Smith C.L., Kadin J.A., Richardson J.E. Mouse Genome Database Group . Mouse Genome Database (MGD). Nucleic Acids Res. 2019; 47:D801–D806. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Smith J.R., Hayman G.T., Wang S.J., Laulederkind S.J.F., Hoffman M.J., Kaldunski M.L., Tutaj M., Thota J., Nalabolu H.S., Ellanki S.L.R. et al. .. The Year of the Rat: The Rat Genome Database at 20: a multi-species knowledgebase and analysis platform. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020; 48:D731–D742. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types