Nomenclature for factors of the HLA system, update July, August and September 2023

Redundancy and absurd names in immunology

“…For example, a paper from 2019 describes rat MHC as 'RT1' (Walter, 2020) instead of 'MhcRano' (i.e., MHC of Rattus norvegicus) and even the authors of the proposal from 1990 agreed to preserve 'HLA' and 'H-2' terms for human and mouse MHC, respectively, instead of MhcHosa and MhcMumu, as the numbers of articles on these two species have been much larger than those for other species. Therefore, I think we have to accept 'HLA' and 'H-2' designations, as they appear in nomenclature committee reports (e.g., Marsh, 2023) but should use MhcXxxx for all other species. Nevertheless, even relatively recent nomenclature reports use old names for some species (Ballingall et al, 2018), and even the IPD/MHC database (https://www.…”

“…In conclusion, the immunological nomenclature is full of awkwardness, understatements and an excess of descriptions of the same biological entity. Although there are international committees organizing the nomenclature and publishing updated names of genes and alleles (e.g., Goetz et al, 2004;Marsh, 2023;Wain et al, 2002), nevertheless there are still publications not following their rules. Therefore, it is still awaiting its Linnaeus.…”