Scientists will rename some genes. The problem is that Excel treats them as dates

Automatic formatting in Microsoft Excel is a useful feature for most users, but how

It turned out that it was not for geneticists.The Verge has learned that the Gene Nomenclature Committee has issued renaming guidelines to prevent them from being automatically formatted as dates in Microsoft spreadsheets. For example, MARCH1 (Membrane Associated RingCH-Type Finger 1) will now be designated as MARCHF1, so that the table does not change this word to "March 1".

This is a big problem for scientists - they checked 3597 scientific articles and found that a fifth of them suffered from Excel errors. Therefore, they have already renamed 27 genes in 2019. Now the researchers will keep a record of the names of genes that the table interprets incorrectly - they are also planned to be renamed in the future.

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The scientific community has changed its name beforegenes, but this was due to confusion in search results in large databases. Now this is directly related to the functionality of the program - the technology does not allow researchers to share the results of their discoveries. At the same time, it is impossible to abandon Excel - scientists regularly use the editor in their work and even when conducting clinical trials.

Microsoft noted that they cannot changefunctionality of the entire program for a specific category of users. The staff added that analyzing genetic data in Excel is "a rather limited use case." If you disable the function, then millions of users will be affected.

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