GIANT - Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits

Human genetics consortium number three is the GIANT - Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits - consortium, a co-author of one of the recent DIAGRAM papers in Nature Genetics.

“The Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits (GIANT) consortium is an international collaboration that seeks to identify genetic loci that modulate human body size and shape, including height and measures of obesity. The GIANT consortium is a collaboration between investigators from many different groups, institutions, countries, and studies, and the results represent their combined efforts. The primary approach has been meta-analysis of genome-wide association data and other large-scale genetic data sets. Anthropometric traits that have been studied by GIANT include body mass index (BMI), height, and traits related to waist circumference (such as waist-hip ratio adjusted for BMI, or WHRadjBMI). Thus far, the GIANT consortium has identified common genetic variants at hundreds of loci that are associated with anthropometric traits.”

Genome-wide association studies are big by nature, and GIANT does have a lot of participating cohorts and groups on their webpage, so I think that GIANT can be given a post hoc rating.

BLAST - Basic Local Alignment Search Tool

If there is one bioinformatics program that every biologist has heard of, it is BLAST: Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. In fact, BLAST is so popular and famous that many people probably don’t know that it is an acronym nor what it stands for; “to BLAST” has become a verb in common use. For non-biologists, BLAST is a homology search tool, which means that it finds similarities between biological (nucleotide or protein) sequences, and biologists will frequently “BLAST a sequence against a database” to find similar sequences.

The original BLAST algorithm is pretty old, which is part of the reason for its widespread fame. I’m not sure of the stats but the original Altschul et al. (1990) paper must be one of the most cited of all time.

• Altschul S, Gish W, Miller W, Myers E & Lipman D (1990). “Basic local alignment search tool”. Journal of Molecular Biology 215 (3): 403–410.

Certainly a worth addition to ORCA. (Although the main motivation for adding it is for the next post!) Given that BLAST works by fragmenting the query sequence into pieces for the initial search, I think that it rates at least as a post hoc.

CICADA - Cochlear Implant Club and ADvisory Association

The cicadas in Sydney are loud this year. Fitting, then, that CICADA is the chosen acronym for the Cochlear Implant Club and Advisory Association.

CICADA Australia Inc. began in 1984 as a support organization in NSW to help new cochlear implantees. At the time there were only 12 implantees. Implant surgeon Prof. Bill Gibson came up with the name intending that it should stand for “Cochlear Implant Club and Deafness Association”. However none of the newly implanted people felt they were still deaf, so a compromise was reached. The title later came to stand for “Cochlear Implant Club and ADvisory Association”.

As cochlear implants make things louder (in a very crude sense) and cicadas are among the noisiest insects in the world, I think there is a definite case to be made for a post hoc connection.

FACE - Free-Air CO2 Enrichment

Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) is not the most contrived acronym in the world but it’s worth a quick mention because (1) I am involved in a project looking at the effects of elevated CO₂ and (2) it is one of those acronyms that, whilst hard to Google without extra keywords, gives lots of opportunities for punny titles. (And who doesn’t love a punny title now and again.) Indeed, one such punny title was the inspiration of today’s post, an ecology Editor’s Choice article in Science: “About FACE” (Sugden AM, 2013. Science 341: 938).

As faces do emit CO₂ and, by doing so, enrich the free-air CO₂, I’m rating FACE as post hoc. (Although I don’t think that’s what they had in mind!)

BIOSTAR - BIOinformatic Special Tactics And Rescue

Thanks to official Friend of ORCA™, Niall, ORCA has hit the Biostar forum. Quite a few of the suggested acronyms in the thread are already queued up for (re)posting but check out Niall's post for an earlier look at some of the riches the field of bioinformatics provides in terms of contrived acronyms - good and bad!

Biostar administrator Istvan Albert contributed one for Biostar itself: BIOinformatic Special Tactics And Rescue. I don't think Biostar is actually an acronym in reality. (Although I always thought it was BioStars and was short for Bioinformatics Stars!) This might constitute a new class of acronym - one that is made up after the word has already been in existence for a while. Inverted post hoc, maybe.

I am guessing that Istvan was inspired by SWAT - Special Weapons And Tactics - a classic that probably deserves a place in ORCA itself. I reckon SWAT is also post hoc - they go and swat the bad guys but it's a tenuous link at best.

PS. If you like this sort of thing, you should also check out another Biostars forum post, CRAC: funny and/or weird names for bioinformatics tools.