Closed:How to convert my first column containing duplicate names to the row names

Question

[koushikayaluri]

I have a gene expression dataset

> View (p53genes)

     Genesymbol     WT1        WT2          WT3        MUT1         MUT2
1   NAT2         2.707238   2.960215       3.554969  2.219525   3.812129
2   NAT2         7.861489   7.128331       7.190403  7.481062   8.034329
3   ADA          6.624238   4.828936       6.467866  6.430245   2.221382
4   CDH2         6.676011   6.015457       6.293267  6.649966   4.123641
5   CDH2         4.508974   6.093028       5.223152  4.579542   6.144728

when I do

>p53genes2 <- rownames(p53genes)

I am getting "1" "2" "3" "4" as my rownames

So I did

>rownames(p53genes) <- p53genes[,1]

Error: duplicate 'row.names' are not allowed

So how can I take my rownames as my genesymbols and not the numerics 1,2,3?

Thank you in advance for your responses.