Why do some gene names or annotation end with '，mitochondrial'

Question

[Saber_J]

Hi everyone , For exanple, full name or gene function description of PIN1 is "Serine/threonine-protein kinase PINK1, mitochondrial". It's subcellular location and papers already published with PIN1 shows that PIN1 plays a role in mitochondria. Obviously, PIN1 is not enconded by mtDNA. So i think gene name end with ', mitochondrial' means this gene is enconed by nuclear genes and play a role in mitochondria. I don't know if I'm right.

https://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/Q9BXM7#names_and_taxonomy

[Wayne]

You come to the right conclusion about the protein and where the gene that encodes it is positioned in your nuclear genome; however you seem to have jumbled a lot of the terms in your post's title and text.

According to https://www.uniprot.org/ :

"The mission of UniProt is to provide the scientific community with a comprehensive, high-quality and freely accessible resource of protein sequence and functional information."

Uniprot is about proteins and protein function.
The link and 'Names & Taxonomy' section you reference doesn't have a gene name ending like you say. It says 'Protein name':

Serine/threonine-protein kinase PINK1, mitochondrial

Below that in the 'Names & Taxonomy' section it says the gene name is PINK1.

Similarly, at the top of the page you linked to it says:

Protein       Serine/threonine-protein kinase PINK1, mitochondrial
Gene          PINK1

If you click on the link under the 'Names & Taxonomy' section to the gene PINK1, you'll see the location of that gene (from the gene page):

Chromosomal location       1p36.12

And so yes, the gene encoding the protein is nuclear, and in fact, on Human chromosome 1.

Most mitochondrial proteins are indeed nuclear encoded, see Import of nuclear-encoded proteins into mitochondria.

From Nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins and their role in cardioprotection:

"During evolution many mitochondrial genes have been transferred to the cell nucleus and now the majority of mitochondrial proteins is encoded in the nuclear DNA"

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FWIW, the description of what the gene encodes that is found on the entry at Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, which is linked to under the 'Names & Taxonomy' section as MIM | 608309, gene below 'Organism-specific databases', might strike you better (from here:

"The PINK1 gene encodes a mitochondrially located serine/threonine kinase (Poole et al., 2008)."

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Maybe you have other examples where a gene is described as mitochondrial when it is not, or a nuclear gene name includes ', mitocondrial' in an unclear way, and you included one that doesn't show that well?

[Saber_J]

Thank you very much for your reply. I will read the descriptors you mentioned carefully and pay more attention to words, especially terminology. Thank you again.

[Michael]

I think you have a good point there.

[Saber_J]

thank you .