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Gene name errors: Redux

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Our latest article "Gene name errors: Lessons not learned" previously @biorxiv_genomic has just been published in PLoS Computational Biology ( link here ). In this post I'll walk you through why it is so important to how computational biology is done. If you are a regular GenomeSpot reader you are probably well aware about how Excel mangles gene names. So why the need for a 2021 update?  Well we thought that the broader genomics community would know about it by now. It has been nearly 20 years since Zeeberg et al's paper on the issue, and five years since our article in Genome Biology which got picked up in a few media outlets and led to SEPT, MARCH and DEC genes being renamed . So with Mandhri Abeysooriya  an outstanding Masters student at Deakin University, we set out to see whether gene name errors in supplementary data files was still an issue. We also had massive assistance from Megan Soria and Mary Kasu . When designing this new work, we wanted to make it bi