Quick question about abstract submission - (Jun/10/2009 )

Hello all,

I wanna submit an abstract to a conference about my ongoing research. The thing i want to know is should I mention the name of the gene about which i got some novel functions or should I write abstract generally about the gene family im working with and mention the results i got? Im going to apply for the oral presentation.

Actually i heard that usually for research which is still unpublished, we should not mention the specific title. seems logical to me but i wanna hear comments from you guys.......

Thanks

How close are you to publishing?
If you're pretty close, then you can be more detailed. Write a fairly general one and see what your supervisor/colleagues think.
I would think you would need to at least state which gene it is otherwise they will not know what you are talking about.

Lost

I second what Lost said. If your work is not close to the finish line and is sensitive, you should wait till you start writing the paper. I do see people use "gene X" to represent the name of a gene in abstract.

Thank you guys for the suggestions. If I judge my work, than based on the results and time spent, it could still take 1.5 to 2 more years to publish. The gene is one of the MAPKs in arabidopsis and the objective is to dig into a MAPK cascade against some biotic and abiotic stresses.

The conference is just a kinda students meeting and not much important, the truth is I need some time off......well i also have some data about tomato MAPKs and I think its a good idea to prersent it because its just a side project...

And naming the gene as 'Gene X' or 'Agent X' is a good idea, i'll give it a try...thanks pcrman .

Or simply rename the gene. Genes are oftened renamed after finding out which function they have.
So you can give your gene a name (like msrX for MAPK stress response protein X or whatever you want) and noone knows which gene it is...