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Semantics: Gene Discovery, Gene Determination?

I came across this paper entitled:
Gene Discovery and Tissue-specific Transcriptome Analysis in Chickpea with Massively Parallel Pyrosequencing and Web Resource Development.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21653784

I would like to ask what is people's opinion on calling de novo transcriptome sequencing and assembly for non-model species a "gene discovery" or "gene determination" study.

Does one discover or determine genes by doing transcriptome sequencing with no reference genome? Are there any better suited alternatives for such term?

transcriptome gene
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updated by Larry_Parnell Larry_Parnell • written by 2184687-1231-83- 2184687-1231-83-

1 answer

A semantics issue, clearly. I would say that providing the initial evidence - be that genomic DNA sequence or transcriptome analysis - for a gene, then that is discovery. If the gene is known, even from a partial sequence, then subsequent data provide for a determination of that gene - the data added to what was known (the existence of that gene) and give info on mRNA start or translation end or splice junctions, etc.

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written by Larry_Parnell Larry_Parnell

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