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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LightPhoenix" data-source="post: 1399696" data-attributes="member: 115">Woot, my biochem degree comes in handy! Ho boy. Nomenclature Generally, a gene is named after one of two things - the phenotype (physical appearance) of the mutated gene, or the protein that it codes for. Now, a gene can take different forms - for instance, a fruit fly can have red eyes, or white eyes. These different forms of the gene are called alleles. Two alleles make up the genotype, which very simply causes you to have a certain phenotype. With me so far? Now, the most common allele in a population is called the wild type (basically). The wild type allele is commonly denoted with a +. So to continue my example above, the wild type fruit fly eye color could be expressed as eye+. Note that the plus sign should be a superscript. eye+ would indicate a red-eye allele, eye would indicate a white-eye allele. The eye part... well, basically it's up to whomever discovers the gene. Alright, great for fruit flies, what about humans? Well, the same principles exist for nomenclature - it's pretty much up to the discoverer, and usually has to do with phenotype or the protein produced. For instance, the beta-hemoglobin chain is commonly annotated as the Greek beta. Alternatively, you can call it by its full name - beta-hemoglobin chain, fruit fly eye color, and so on. Identification This is going to be really tough to simplify, but I'm going to try. If you know where a gene is, it's simple - say 3q15. This means, third chromosome, the shorter arm (p for the longer one), 15 units from the center. If you know the genetic code, it's still pretty simple. DNA is double-stranded, and they are complementary strands - that is, if you know one strand, you know the other. What you can do to identify the gene is make something called a primer. A primer is a short sequence of genetic code complementary to the one you are look for - so it'll stick to it. You attach a phosphorescent or fluorescent molecule to the primer - you make it glow. You can then disrupt the DNA, put in the primer, and it will stick naturally. You then seperate and isolate the glowing bits <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. Like I said, very simple. If you don't know the code, but you have the protein it produces, you can attempt to sequence the protein, reverse engineer from that the genetic code, and then make primers to try and find it in the DNA. It's a long and arduous process, and it's why it takes so long to find genes. This is the most common way of doing things. Of course, isolating a specific protein is pretty difficult, and there are some problems with this approach, but once it's isolated the hard part is essentially over. A good shortcut is if you've identified the protein in another animal, you can use that as a base to start - chances are if the proteins have similar functions, they'll have similar code. This isn't always true, but it works enough to be a viable shortcut to investigate. I'd really need a more specific question to make a more coherent answer. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /> Oh, btw, biochem people unite!  Actually, if you people with Ph.D.s wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you guys a few questions in e-mail or PM, if that's okay with you guys.</blockquote>

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