Recommendations for the Nomenclature of Hemoglobins

At a conference in Boston, Massachusetts, in December 1960, a number of leading workers on the structure of hemoglobins proposed a set of recommendations on nomenclature.These were submitted to the JOURNAL and were carefully considered by other workers in the field.We have now decided that their publication in the JOURNAL is desirable, although of course they do not have the official force of recommendations from commissions of the international scientific unions.The Editors regard the publication of these recommendations as an experiment, which we hope may have useful results.Publication of other proposals of this sort in the JOURNAL will be considered only in very exceptional cases, until there has been time for appraisal of the results of this experiment.Contributors to the JOURNAL, who submit papers on the structure of hemoglobins, are not required to use the nomenclature here proposed.In the interest of developing clarity of communication among scientists, however, we recommend that contributors of such papers consider these proposals carefully and make use of this nomenclature unless they have specific reasons for considering it unsatisfactory.Obviously the proposals are subject to criticism and discussion.