text: A nearly universal rule in copyediting of articles for medical journals and other health science publications is that abbreviations and acronyms must be expanded at first use, to provide a glossing type of explanation. Typically no exceptions are permitted except for small lists of especially well known terms (such as DNA or HIV). Although readers with high subject-matter expertise do not need most of these expansions, those with intermediate or (especially) low expertise are appropriately served by them.
  One complication that gene and protein symbols bring to this general rule is that they are not, accurately speaking, abbreviations or acronyms, despite the fact that many were originally coined via abbreviating or acronymic etymology. They are pseudoacronyms (as SAT and KFC also are) because they do not "stand for" any expansion. Rather, the relationship of a gene symbol to the gene name is functionally the relationship of a nickname to a formal name (both are complete identifiers)—it is not the relationship of an acronym to its expansion. In fact, many official gene symbol–gene name pairs do not even share their initial-letter sequences (although some do). Nevertheless, gene and protein symbols "look just like" abbreviations and acronyms, which presents the problem that "failing" to "expand" them (even though it is not actually a failure and there are no true expansions) creates the appearance of violating the spell-out-all-acronyms rule.
  One common way of reconciling these two opposing forces is simply to exempt all gene and protein symbols from the glossing rule. This is certainly fast and easy to do, and in highly specialized journals, it is also justified because the entire target readership has high subject matter expertise. (Experts are not confused by the presence of symbols (whether known or novel) and they know where to look them up online for further details if needed.) But for journals with broader and more general target readerships, this action leaves the readers without any explanatory annotation and can leave them wondering what the apparent-abbreviation stands for and why it was not explained. Therefore, a good alternative solution is simply to put either the official gene name or a suitable short description (gene alias/other designation) in parentheses after the first use of the official gene/protein symbol. This meets both the formal requirement (the presence of a gloss) and the functional requirement (helping the reader to know what the symbol refers to). The same guideline applies to shorthand names for sequence variations; AMA says, "In general medical publications, textual explanations should accompany the shorthand terms at first mention." Thus "188del11" is glossed as "an 11-bp deletion at nucleotide 188." This corollary rule (which forms an adjunct to the spell-everything-out rule) often also follows the "abbreviation-leading" style of expansion that is becoming more prevalent in recent years. Traditionally, the abbreviation always followed the fully expanded form in parentheses at first use. This is still the general rule. But for certain classes of abbreviations or acronyms (such as clinical trial acronyms [e.g., ECOG or standardized polychemotherapy regimens [e.g., CHOP), this pattern may be reversed, because the short form is more widely used and the expansion is merely parenthetical to the discussion at hand. The same is true of gene/protein symbols.