It’s national poetry month again!

I am not a mouse.
It’s the reference allele
(hg38).

I am not a mouse.
It's the common variant
In these folks tested.

Saw on minus strand
G is the major allele
In this group tested.


C is the minor
It’s the reference allele
(hg38).


Last year I wrote a haiku to highlight my gripe about authors declaring a patient a *1 but not stating which alleles were tested so not conclusively ruling out the presence of variants. This year I have a series of haiku on another gripe of mine - authors using the term “wild-type” when talking about humans. I’ve been guilty of it in the past but when we know better we do better. The one upside of it is it's a way one can avoid using terms major/minor allele when those might be different in different populations and thus ambiguous, but I think most study participants would not want to be categorized as wild-type, certainly most would not want to be called mutant (unless it comes with some X-men type powers). The terms I would recommend are “reference allele/genotype” (on genome build …) and “comparison allele/genotype”. If using major/minor allele then state explicitly what base that was in the given population, and describe the population, and which strand the allele was measured on (especially for C/G and A/T variants and genes on minus chromosomal strand). We have been seeing problems lately when authors assume the reference allele on the genome build hg38 is the major allele in most populations and that is not always the case. If in doubt give as much information as possible.