Release 8.1

Man gave names to all the... proteins

We have spent many years curating all kinds of proteins from all kinds of species. One recurring challenge is to offer an easily searchable and consistent knowledgebase dealing, in particular, with many ambiguities and discrepancies regarding protein names. Nomenclature is not only indispensable for communication, but also for literature search and entry retrieval. We feel that our experience in this field can be valuable, and that we can play a role in helping the standardization of protein nomenclature.

To take up this challenge, we created a new document which describes guidelines used by UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot annotators to give each entry the most appropriate name, called the "Recommended name" (RN). In short, an RN should follow the approved nomenclature, if it exists, and should be unique and attributed to all orthologs. Other rules deal mostly with the syntax of submitted protein names in order to have consistent and reproducible RNs in spite of the variability observed in various submissions. If our RN differs from the submitted one, the latter is kept as "alternative name". In this way we enhance the searchability, as well as the consistency, of our database.

We sincerely hope that researchers will adhere as much as possible to these guidelines for naming new proteins when publishing or submitting their data. This will make their results easily searchable, allow tracking of a given protein across related organisms and help us in our continuing effort to standardize nomenclature.