I would think that having Common Name and Aliases attributes would be useful. I think that some attribute is needed to represent the Gene Symbol that would be associated with a Node. Do you envision replacing Common Name with a Label attribute?
Also, a number of analysis and search routines may need to know what the aliases for a node name are. Perhaps we may want to define a set of default attributes that are associated with every Node (and/or edge).
(comment above posted by Allan Kuchinsky)
Yes exactly, Common Name would be replaced with a Label attribute. Having a set of default attributes with every Node/Edge seems useful to me.