REACH - Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals

REACH - Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals is a fine example of acronym contrivance (although lacking the panache of a good pre hoc concoction). Not got the right words for something catchy? Just ignore the inconvenient word!

“[REACH] streamlines and improves the former legislative framework on chemicals of the European Union (EU). The main aims of REACH are to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals, the promotion of alternative test methods, the free circulation of substances on the internal market and enhancing competitiveness and innovation.”

I guess you can’t blame them for trying to make it more interesting.

MUSIC - MUltiScale enrIchment Calling

Over on the ACGT blog, Keith Bradnam has another JABBA Award (and a nice new JABBA logo):

MUSIC - Multiscale Enrichment Calling.

I'm not sure what the connection between MUSIC and ChIP-Seq is but the authors seemed pretty determined. His post is actually a twofer, as it also draws attention to an equally contrived an unfathomable intranym:

MuSiC - Multiple Sequence Alignment with Constraints

Read more at Keith’s blog!

DREAM - Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods

According to the website, DREAM is a Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods:

“The main objective is to catalyze the interaction between experiment and theory in the area of cellular network inference and quantitative model building in systems biology.”

Not clear?

“DREAM (Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods) poses fundamental questions about systems biology, and invites participants to propose solutions. The main objective is to catalyze the interaction between theory and experiment, specifically in the area of cellular network inference and quantitative model building. DREAM challenges address how we can assess the quality of our descriptions of networks that underlie biological systems, and of our predictions of the outcomes of novel experiments. These are not simple questions. Researchers have used a variety of algorithms to deduce the structure of biological networks and/or to predict the outcome of perturbations to their systems. They have also evaluated the success of their methodologies using a diverse set of non-standardised metrics. What is still needed, and what DREAM aims to achieve, is a fair comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and a clear sense of the reliability of the models that researchers create.”

I know a bit about Systems Biology but I must admit to being confused about the “Assessment and Methods” part of DREAM. I think it means that DREAM is about assessing methods and models for reverse engineering biological systems (i.e. Systems Biology), even though it reads that they are trying to reverse engineer assessments and methods. Such dedication to the acronym over clarity makes DREAM a worthy ORCA entry.

ILIaD - Institute for Learning Innovation and Development

The learning and teaching unit at the University of Southampton has had a few different names over the years but its latest incarnation is ORCA-worthy with some selective use of prepositions: ILIaD - the Institute for Learning Innovation and Development. Find out more at the ILIaD website. (Although ILIaD is undoubtedly replete with heroes, I think this is ad hoc.)

MAGIC - the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium

The final human genetics consortium (for now) is MAGIC - the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium, another co-author of the DIAGRAM consortium. This is probably the most contrived of the lot, in that it failed to use all its words but did include “Consortium”. At the same time, being part of MAGIC has a certain appeal above CHARGE, DIAGRAM or GIANT.

“MAGIC (the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium) represents a collaborative effort to combine data from multiple GWAS to identify additional loci that impact on glycemic and metabolic traits.

MAGIC investigators have initially studied fasting glucose, fasting insulin, 2h glucose and HBA1c, as well as performed meta-analysis of more sophisticated measures of insulin secretion and sensitivity. Through these efforts, dozens of loci influencing these traits have been idenified, a subset of which also influence risk of type 2 diabetes.”

There is a certain degree of magic involved in a good genome-wide association study (GWAS) but I still rate this one ad hoc.

If contrived consortium acronyms are your thing, you can probably do a lot worse than sign up to the Table of Contents alerts for the journal Nature Genetics.

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.

DIAGRAM - DIAbetes Genetics Replication And Meta-analysis

The DIAGRAM - DIAbetes Genetics Replication And Meta-analysis - consortium is the second ORCA entry this month for human genetics consortia, which seem to be almost as productive a source of contrived acronyms as bioinformatics.

“The DIAGRAM (DIAbetes Genetics Replication And Meta-analysis) consortium is a grouping of researchers with shared interests in performing large-scale studies to characterise the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, and a principal focus on samples of European descent.”

You can read more on their website, which features an array of additional acronyms (including some future ORCA entries).