Synonym gene names have some ambiguity. Is it a curation issue or something biological?

Question

[kirannbishwa01]

I am not sure if this question is appropriate for Biostars. But, since the data is associated with gene curation, it might.

I am looking at several "PIN" genes in Arabidopsis; but for these two genes "PIN5 and PIN8", they are listed as synonymous to each other, but physically they are located in two different positions of the genome but are very close to each other.

Pin5: http://plants.ensembl.org/Arabidopsis_thaliana/Gene/Compara_Ortholog?db=core;g=AT5G16530;r=5:5400600-5402845;t=AT5G16530.1

Pin8: http://plants.ensembl.org/Arabidopsis_thaliana/Gene/Summary?g=AT5G15100;r=5:4892016-4894113;t=AT5G15100.1;db=core

Is this a curation problem? Or, is it something else.

Answer 1

[Denise CS]

You may want to bring this up with UniProt as the nomenclature used in Ensembl Plants seems to be coming from them. If you check these in TAIR, PIN5 is not listed as a synomym of PIN8, rather that PIN8 acts together with PIN5.