Hi Alex: There are Ontologies projects which are trying to keep naming consistent across organisms. The information needed in each sub-discipline is subtly different. There are overall efforts within specific groups such as MicroArrays (MGED) and others. However the vocabularies to help define the data structures properly needs to follow from a common set of agreed upon terms (hence the ontologies issues). Joe -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman at scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 612 4615