{"id":618,"date":"2021-02-05T13:00:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/?p=618"},"modified":"2021-02-09T06:32:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T17:32:08","slug":"alumni-series-tamsin-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/alumni-series-tamsin-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Series: Tamsin Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What\u2019s in a name? Well, if it\u2019s the name of a gene then certain things are really useful\u2014that it\u2019s unique and memorable, say, or has a short form that\u2019s easy to pronounce.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

And who actually names genes? (It\u2019s a question that few of us likely ever think to ask.) Someone must\u2014after all, just imagine the mess if we all used different names for the same common genes.<\/p>\n

If fact, that mystery \u2018someone\u2019 might well be former Otago genetics student Tamsin Jones, who\u2019s now a Gene Nomenclature Advisor (the name says it all, right?) at the European Bioinformatics Institute.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

At first glance, Tamsin\u2019s role, as part of a seven-strong nomenclature committee, seems straightforward: \u201cWe\u2019re looking to give everyone a shared language to work with,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part, once people understand why we [the committee] exist, it makes sense,\u201d Tamsin says; indeed, \u201cminimising confusion\u201d is crucial in areas like human health that impact directly on people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s also much more to it than that.<\/p>\n

For example, what if different researchers in different parts of the world independently discover the same new genes? Or if known genes are later found to have other, more significant functions? Who brings all this information together or, as importantly, ensures it\u2019s readily shared with others?<\/p>\n

You guessed it: it\u2019s biocurators3<\/sup>\u00a0like Tamsin who help collect, annotate and validate the huge volumes of genetic information accumulating in this ever-growing field.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, it\u2019s the job of synthesising research-generated data and summarising key findings,\u201d she says. Creating and maintaining databases (e.g.,\u00a0genenames.org<\/a>) to disseminate this information is also an invaluable part of the biocurator\u2019s role. (While we all appreciate the convenience of information at our fingertips, how many of us pause to consider how it so \u2018magically\u2019 appears?)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Illustration by Poppy Ollerenshaw Whittle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSomeone has to put that data there in the first place,\u201d Tamsin points out. And, she says, they\u2019re always happy to receive feedback and suggestions from researchers and database users.<\/p>\n

Yet how did Auckland-born Tamsin end up in such a curious job?<\/p>\n

Inspired by the then-on-going Human Genome Project plus the \u201camazing and exciting” popular science books she read (such as Matt Ridley\u2019s \u2018Genome\u2019), she enrolled at Otago to study anatomy and genetics. Next came postgraduate lab work on limb development in frogs before a switch to studying the genetics of insects, initially at Otago and then at grad school Harvard, where she ended up teaching undergraduate genetics.<\/p>\n

But she \u201cfelt drawn to a biocuration career path\u201d when helping annotate the genomes of insects such as the milkweed bug (the laboratory model for sap-sucking agricultural pests). So when an interesting position came up in Europe, she readily swapped Cambridge, Massachusetts for Cambridge, England\u2014first as the curator of FlyBase (\u201can amazing resource that summarises all the research on fruit flies) and then in her current role at EBI.<\/p>\n

Although the day-to-day job involves a lot of (sometimes \u201cdiplomatic\u201d) engagement with researchers, a few oddballs do crop up, Tamsin says. For instance, devising a new symbol for the \u2018gastric intrinsic factor\u2019 gene or GIF due to web search confusion with other, non-genetic GIFs; or renaming the inappropriately-labelled \u2018DOPEY\u2019 genes after their role in cognitive impairment was recognised.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s the type of work that won\u2019t come to an end any time soon. With the human genome, for instance,\u00a0 while \u201cwe think we have most of the protein coding genes,\u201d that still leaves a vast number \u201cwhere we don\u2019t yet know their role,\u201d Tamsin says. And then, of course, there\u2019s the non-human world, where historically different naming systems have been used with different species.<\/p>\n

Given her wider background in evolutionary biology, therefore, Tamsin\u2019s also taken on the task \u201cof trying to harmonise gene names across vertebrates \u2026 to bring them in line with humans\u201d.<\/p>\n

With classic Kiwi understatement, she reckons \u201cit would be nice if they [the common genes] all had the same names\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Written by Mick Whittle<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo Supplied by Tamsin Jones<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/sup>\u00a0For instance, the gene\u00a0name\u00a0<\/strong>\u2018cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4\u2019 tells us something useful about its function, while the corresponding\u00a0symbol<\/strong>,\u00a0CTLA4<\/em>, is much easier to say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>More precisely, Tamsin\u2019s a GNA with HGNC at EMBL-EBI. Or, in translation, a Gene Nomenclature Advisor with the Human Genome Organisation Gene Nomenclature Committee at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory\u2014European Bioinformatics Institute. We\u2019re unsure whether there are\u00a0 Organisation Nomenclature Advisors who come up with these names …<\/span><\/p>\n

3\u00a0<\/sup>Talking of names, what a wonderful one\u00a0biocurator<\/em>\u00a0is\u2014literally a \u2018custodian of life\u2019. And it\u2019s a sign of the newness of the field that the term was only coined around 2006.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s in a name? Well, if it\u2019s the name of a gene then certain things are really useful\u2014that it\u2019s unique and memorable, say, or has a short form that\u2019s easy to pronounce.1 And who actually names genes? (It\u2019s a question that few of us likely ever think to ask.) Someone must\u2014after all, just imagine the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37560,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37560"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}