An Iowa and Texas lab are sharing credit for the serendipitous, concurrent discovery of a protein-coding gene. The Daily Iowan reports that findings from the University of Iowa Boudreau Lab and a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center lab were published side-by-side in the journal Cell Reports, for the gene that UI investigators call “Mitoregulin,” and the Texas lab calls “MOXI,” an acronym for “micropeptide regulator of beta-oxidation.” The official gene name recognized by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee is “mitoregulin,” with the symbol “MTLN”. A third lab at Harvard had also technically discovered the gene, the Daily Iowan reports, but will not receive credit after research by UI and the Texas lab were first published.
