{"id":29710,"date":"2020-08-07T16:34:39","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T20:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=29710"},"modified":"2020-08-10T15:55:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T19:55:08","slug":"renaming-human-genes-for-excel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/07\/renaming-human-genes-for-excel\/","title":{"rendered":"Renaming Human Genes for Excel"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Vincent<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But [Excel’s] default settings were designed with more mundane applications in mind, so when a user inputs a gene’s alphanumeric symbol into a spreadsheet, like MARCH1 — short for “Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1<\/a>“ — Excel converts that into a date: 1-Mar. <\/p>

This is extremely frustrating, even dangerous, corrupting data that scientists have to sort through by hand to restore. It’s also surprisingly widespread and affects even peer-reviewed scientific work. One study from 2016<\/a> examined genetic data shared alongside 3,597 published papers and found that roughly one-fifth had been affected by Excel errors.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

This week, the HGNC published new guidelines<\/a> for gene naming, including for “symbols that affect data handling and retrieval.” From now on, they say, human genes and the proteins they expressed will be named with one eye on Excel’s auto-formatting. That means the symbol MARCH1 has now become MARCHF1, while SEPT1 has become SEPTIN1, and so on.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Many gene symbols that can be read as nouns have been renamed to avoid false positives during searches, for example. In the past, CARS has become CARS1, WARS changed to WARS1, and MARS tweaked to MARS1.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2020-08-10): Michael Love<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As long as we’re renaming things around Excel, it would be great if we could change the Pinyin syllable ‘jun’ into something that Excel doesn’t interpret as a month.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Vincent: But [Excel’s] default settings were designed with more mundane applications in mind, so when a user inputs a gene’s alphanumeric symbol into a spreadsheet, like MARCH1 — short for “Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1“ — Excel converts that into a date: 1-Mar. This is extremely frustrating, even dangerous, corrupting data that scientists have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-08-07T20:34:43Z","apple_news_api_id":"80948dec-e727-4b4a-a5ab-77001c0dcbe4","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-08-10T19:55:11Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AgJSN7OcnS0qlq3cAHA3L5A","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30,609,460,343],"class_list":["post-29710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-mac","tag-microsoft-excel","tag-science","tag-search"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29733,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29710\/revisions\/29733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}