{"id":18,"date":"2016-02-10T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T19:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.231.106.19\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2019-07-06T06:15:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T06:15:32","slug":"watch-out-gene-symbols-within-excel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Watch out gene symbols within Excel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>[This is an old blog written on Wednesday, February 10, 2016]<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>We do not recommend use gene symbols (or synonyms) as primary identifier within a gene list, especially within Excel. Excel irreversibly converts certain symbols into dates and it becomes much worse when gene synonyms are used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We checked all primary human gene symbols, Excel automatically converts the following 35 symbols into dates: FEB1, FEB2, FEB5, FEB6, FEB7, FEB9, FEB10, MARCH1, MARC1, MARCH2, MARC2, MARCH3, MARCH4, MARCH5, MARCH6, MARCH7, MARCH8, MARCH9, MARCH10, MARCH11, SEPT1, SEPT2, SEPT3, SEPT4, SEPT5, SEPT6, SEPT7, SEPT8, SEPT9, SEPT10, SEPT11, SEPT12, SEPT14, SEP15, DEC1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversion is irreversible for two reasons. &nbsp;First, the original symbol is lost and the cell only stores an integer representing the number of days since Jan 1, 1900. &nbsp;Second, notice both MARCH1 and MARC1 map to the same date, as well as MARCH2 and MARC2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation become even worse, if we allow gene synonyms. &nbsp;E.g., SEP53 (Gene ID 49860) becomes Sep, 1953, 2E4 (Gene ID 11133) becomes 20000. 9-27 (Gene ID 8519) becomes Sep 27th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a wild west, when we look into mouse and rat. &nbsp;There are primary symbols such as 201E9, 9130022E09, 3e46, NA, NaN, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How to fix a gene symbol in Excel? To enter MARCH1 into a cell, type &#8216;MARCH1 (prefix it with a single quote). This hints Excel to preserve the input, while the single quote is nicely invisible to Excel formula and in data export.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For all the reasons above, we recommend other gene identifier types to be used with Excel. &nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/metascape.org\/\">Metascape<\/a>&nbsp;supports Entrez Gene ID, RefSeq, UniProt, Ensembl and UCSC identifiers, which all work peacefully with Excel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This is an old blog written on Wednesday, February 10, 2016] We do not recommend use gene symbols (or synonyms) as primary identifier within a gene list, especially within Excel. Excel irreversibly converts certain symbols into dates and it becomes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/?p=18\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20,8,19],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-bad-gene-name","tag-excel","tag-gene-symbol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metascape.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}