Talk:PAX2

Is this simultaneosly a gene and a proteine?

@Andrew Su and Julialturner: Your 'bot created this short article with a beginning essentially as it still is:

Paired box gene 2, also known as PAX2 is a protein which in humans is encoded by the PAX2 gene.

I think I saw similar formulations in a few other of the articles your boot created.

I'm a bit confused by this. Is it really usual to consider "gene" and "protein" as synonyms? I thought that a "gene" in general was thought to be coding a "protein", but that would not mean that the gene and the protein are identical.

I looked at the first reference you gave. I think this supports my impression that genes and proteines are not the same thing. The only occurence of "protein" in the article was in the following two sentences:

The undulated (un) mutation on mouse Chr 2, which gives rise to vertebral column defects, has been shown to be caused by a point mutation in a conserved part of the paired domain of Pax-1 (Balling et al. 1988). This mutation decreases the DNA-binding affinity and alters the DNA-binding specificity of the un Pax-1 protein.

This seems all very stright-forward. As in other parts of that article, and with other numbers in lieu of 1, "Pax-1" or "Pax-1 gene" seems to refer to the DNA coding for a protein called "Pax-1 protein". The mutation un would be a (genotypical) minor change of the coding DNA; its phenotypical effect would be that the protein for which the gene Pax-1 codes has changed properties. (In this case, the regulator Pax-1 protein coded for by the mutated Pax-1 gene would not as easily be bound to certain DNA regions as the protein coded for by an unmutated Pax-1 allele would.)

Have I misunderstood the terminology here, or was the 'bot a bit sloppy in calling "Paired box gene 2" or "PAX2" in itself a protein? JoergenB (talk) 18:44, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the general consensus within the WP:MCB community was that unless there was a specific need to describe the gene and protein separately (e.g., they each would have a massive amount of information, and combining them would be unwieldy), then we would have single pages that describe both the gene and protein. They aren't synonyms of course, but the thought was that an integrated view would better inform readers. If you want to re-open that discussion, either in general or for this gene/protein in specific, I'd suggest posting at the MCB talk page. Best, Andrew Su (talk) 17:04, 6 March 2020 (UTC)