HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee

HGNC

Content
Description	HGNC is responsible for approving unique symbols and names for human loci, including protein coding genes, RNA genes and pseudogenes, to allow unambiguous scientific communication.
Data types captured	Gene nomenclature
Organisms	Human
Contact
Research center	EMBL-EBI, UK;
Primary citation	Braschi et al. (2019)[1]
Access
Website	www.genenames.org www.genenames.org/news
Download URL	Statistics & Downloads Custom Downloads HGNC Biomart
Web service URL	rest.genenames.org
Tools
Web	HGNC Comparison of Orthology Predictions,[2][3] Search
Miscellaneous
Curation policy	Yes

The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) is a committee of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) that sets the standards for human gene nomenclature. The HGNC approves a unique and meaningful name for every known human gene,^[4][5] based on a query of experts. In addition to the name, which is usually 1 to 10 words long, the HGNC also assigns a symbol (a short group of characters) to every gene. As with an SI symbol, a gene symbol is like an abbreviation but is more than that, being a second unique name that can stand on its own just as much as substitute for the longer name. It may not necessarily "stand for" the initials of the name, although many gene symbols do reflect that origin.