Julia G. Bodmer (Tissue Antigen Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London): "`The dull catalogue of common things.' These words of the 19th-century English poet John Keats would sound like an apt description of a nomenclature report. Yet for the second time in three years an HLA nomenclature report has been selected as a hot paper (see Hot Papers, The Scientist, March 18, 1991, page 15). To draw an analogy, the columns of figures in a company report look utterly boring to the uninitiated, but to the cognoscenti they tell the story of the company as enthrallingly as any thriller. Thus it is with nomenclature reports. In the dry tables and lists of names of new genes and alleles we can trace the progress of the field.
"The acceleration of progress can be measured by the number of new genes and alleles identified since the last report-- 35 genes and 275 ...
