X is not a gene!

I've spent most of the afternoon reading about the gene I'm currently working on, or at least, trying to. Amazingly, my lack of reading about this gene isn't due to procrastination--I have actually been reading--it's because the people writing the papers refuse to be clear about what gene they're working on. My protein is X2, which is very similar to X1. Unfortunately, a lot of the papers are written about X, which isn't a real gene name.

At first, I thought the authors just didn't realise there was an X2 and so were being lazy about adding the 1. However, I've just read several papers where the authors reveal in the discussion that they knew all along that their experiments targeting X1 could also have been affecting X2, but "we are presently lacking any direct evidence" that it does (i.e. we haven't bothered doing the experiments). And yet, they keep using antibodies and other reagents that recognise both X1 and X2 (or not even making it clear what it is they're using). Grr!

Of course, it's better for me if they all ignore X2 and keep pretending X1 is the only one, because I think X2 is actually more important, or at least interestingly different. It makes for very frustrating reading, though. And it's not like reading was fun to begin with.