Semantics: Gene Discovery, Gene Determination?

Question

[2184687-1231-83-]

I came across this paper entitled:
Gene Discovery and Tissue-specific Transcriptome Analysis in Chickpea with Massively Parallel Pyrosequencing and Web Resource Development.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21653784

I would like to ask what is people's opinion on calling de novo transcriptome sequencing and assembly for non-model species a "gene discovery" or "gene determination" study.

Does one discover or determine genes by doing transcriptome sequencing with no reference genome? Are there any better suited alternatives for such term?

Answer 1

[Larry_Parnell]

A semantics issue, clearly. I would say that providing the initial evidence - be that genomic DNA sequence or transcriptome analysis - for a gene, then that is discovery. If the gene is known, even from a partial sequence, then subsequent data provide for a determination of that gene - the data added to what was known (the existence of that gene) and give info on mRNA start or translation end or splice junctions, etc.