Nomenclature report on rice WRKY's - Conflict regarding gene names and its solution

Recently, the CGSNL surveyed genes in the rice WRKY family in published journal articles and found several duplicated gene names.To discuss and resolve inconsistencies in WRKY gene nomenclature, the rice WRKY working group was established and redefined the nomenclature. This report announces the conclusion.Since 2004, when whole genome sequences of rice were made publically accessible (Goff et al. 2002; Yu et al. 2002; IRGSP 2005; Yuan et al. 2003, 2005), the number of articles on new rice genes, including genome-wide studies of rice gene families, has increased remarkably. Although vigorous research activity is promising, the conflicts with regard to the duplication of gene names in journal articles can occur. Therefore, the CGSNL (Committee on Gene Symbolization, Nomenclature and Linkage, Rice Genetics Cooperative) published the "Gene Nomenclature System for Rice" in 2008 (CGSNL 2008) and encouraged researchers to follow the nomenclature rules before publication of their results.The WRKY family is one of the largest families of transcription factors in higher plants and WRKY genes have key roles in plant development and responses to environmental stresses (see Rushton et al. 2010 and Chen et al. 2011 for recent reviews). Recently, the CGSNL surveyed genes in the rice WRKY family in published journal articles and found several duplicated gene names (Additional file 1: Table S1). Several reasons account for such duplications. For example, if two research groups independently performed their studies and submitted the results to different journals at the same time, neither group would be aware of the results of the other research group until the studies were published. In some cases, a sequence in the DNA data banks and/or in the genome databases was updated after the publication of a study, and only the older version of the sequence contained the WRKY domain, indicating that the gene became obsolete (retired from new gene list, e.g. WRKY78 in Additional file 1: Table