RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Gene name errors: lessons not learned
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.03.30.437702
DO 10.1101/2021.03.30.437702
A1 Mandhri Abeysooriya
A1 Megan Soria
A1 Mary Sravya Kasu
A1 Mark Ziemann
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/31/2021.03.30.437702.abstract
AB Erroneous conversion of gene names into other dates and other data types has been a frustration for computational biologists for years. We hypothesized that such errors in supplementary files might diminish after a report in 2016 highlighting the extent of the problem. To assess this, we performed a scan of supplementary files published in PubMed Central from 2014 to 2020. Overall, gene name errors continued to accumulate unabated in the period after 2016. An improved scanning software we developed identified gene name errors in 30.9% of articles with supplementary Excel gene lists; a figure significantly higher than previously estimated. This is due to gene names being converted not just to dates and floating-point numbers, but also to five-digit numbers. These findings further reinforce that spreadsheets are ill-suited to use with large genomic data.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.HGNCHUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee PMC: PubMed CentralJIFJournal Impact FactorHTMLHypertext markup language