Delete string from names in sublists

I have a list of lists I need to delete "gene-" everywhere where it happens.
I tried

 lapply(net, FUN = function(x) setNames(x, sub("gene-","", x)))

but I get the error

>Error in names(object) <- nm : attempt to set an attribute on NULL

 head(net)
$colors
gene-AAAS         gene-AAK1        gene-AAMDC         gene-AAMP        gene-AARS1        gene-AASDH 
"magenta"           "brown"          "purple"        "darkgrey"           "brown"            "blue" 
gene-AASDHPPT         gene-AASS         gene-AATK         gene-ABAT        
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 8990 entries ]
$unmergedColors
gene-AAAS         gene-AAK1        gene-AAMDC         gene-AAMP        gene-AARS1        gene-AASDH 
"darkgrey"            "blue"         "magenta"  "darkolivegreen"            "blue"           "brown" 
gene-AASDHPPT         gene-AASS         gene-AATK         gene-ABAT        gene-ABCA1       gene-ABCA12 
"lightyellow"      "lightgreen"       "turquoise"         "darkred"       "turquoise"          "grey60" 
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 8990 entries ]
$MEs
MEblack MEgreenyellow MElightcyan    MEyellow MEturquoise      MEpink     MEwhite   MEdarkred
M5  -0.17423916   0.141440817  0.23401244  0.36358728  -0.0220835 -0.18126013  0.05942248 -0.45035371
N3   0.47690393   0.428961135  0.07241255 -0.02557197   0.2238352  0.06742087 -0.09574663  0.52201599
$goodSamples
[1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
$goodGenes
[1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
[ reached getOption("max.print") -- omitted 8990 entries ]
$dendrograms
$dendrograms[[1]]
Call:
fastcluster::hclust(d = as.dist(dissTom), method = "average")
Cluster method   : average 
Number of objects: 9990 

dput(net)

    166L, 5768L, 2346L, 7132L, 625L, 4848L, 736L, 7001L, 
1721L, 6626L, 7674L, 2543L, 7013L, 8667L, 4593L, 2804L, 

....

7435L, 4895L, 8462L, 1732L, 3160L, 8529L), labels = NULL, 
method = "average", call = fastcluster::hclust(d = as.dist(dissTom), 
method = "average"), dist.method = NULL), class = "hclust")), 
TOMFiles = NULL, blockGenes = list(1:9990), blocks = c(1, 
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 

...

1, 1), MEsOK = TRUE)

Your code almost works, you need two changes:

1. You want to modify the names, so your inner function needs to read names(x):

   function(x) setNames(x, sub("gene-", "", names(x)))
   

2. net contains a lot of members. You only want to replace the colors and unmergedColors members, so apply your function to only those. Oh, and you need to assign the result back to your object:

   which = c("colors", "unmergedColors")
   net[which] = lapply(net[which], function(x) setNames(x, sub("gene-", "", names(x))))