MENDEL - THE PLANT GENE NOMENCLATURE DATABASE
Benedict Arnold1, Benjamin Arnold1, David Lonsdale1, Carl Price2, Ellen
Reardon2 and Steve Beckstrom-Sternberg3
1Department of Molecular Genetics, John Innes Centre, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK. ;
2Waksman Institute, Piscataway, NJ 08855-0759, USA ; 3Genome Informatics Group,
USDA, NAL, ISD, 10301Baltimore Blvd., Beltsville, MD 20705-2351

MENDEL is the 'Plant Gene Nomenclature' database operated by a European office
of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology's Commission on Plant
Gene Nomenclature at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK). The aims of the
project are to develop a common nomenclature for sequenced genes in all
photosynthetic organisms, the organelle genomes of both photosynthetic and
non-photosynthetic organisms (fungi, algae and protozoa) and plant viruses.The
implementation of a common system of gene nomenclature stems from the
burgeoning use of idiosyncratic and conflicting names for plant genes that give
little or no information about gene function. It can only be advantageous for
the scientific community as a whole to share a common genetic language.As well
as developing a common nomenclature and representing a repository for this
information, MENDEL aims to develop tools in association with the Genome
Informatics Group (NAL) to facilitate the retrieval of coding sequence data
from the sequence databases and subsequent direct import into the Biology
Workbench at the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). Thus,
the information within MENDEL and continued development of associated tools
will provide a most useful resource for the molecular biology community as a
whole.