People have this idea that scientists are these sombre, sensible people, but honestly basically no one in science can be trusted to act with even a modicum of dignity.
I had a lecture this morning about using transgenic plants to create therapeutic antibodies on a large scale for medical purposes, with greater output and less risk than using mammalian cell-lines: Plantibodies. This is pretty much the standard term for them now.
Last term I learnt about a gene called TMM that causes multiple stomata to form together, stands for “Too Many Mouths”. Not “Too Many Stomata”, not “Bunched” or “Clustered” Stomata nope, “Too Many Mouths”.
Chloroplasts and mitochondria have double membranes around them, and paired, transport protein complexes that allow things to pass through them. In mitochondria these were names Translocation of the Inner Membrane proteins and Translocation of the Outer Membrane proteins…the TIM/TOM complex. When, someone discovered an equivalent for chloroplasts they decided to name them TIC and TOC because it’s sensible and certainly not as some huge joke.
There’s an Arabidopsis mutant that causes excess stamens (male organs) to develop on the flowers: Superman. An antagonistic gene was discovered, and there’s no prizes for working out that it got named Kryptonite.
This website: http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/ is dedicated primarily to stupid taxonomic names, but also covers some genes:
The gene JAK - retconned to “Janus Kinase” for publication, but originally stood for “Just Another Kinase.”
“Cleopatra - The Cleopatra mutation is lethal only if Asp is also present. “
“tinman - the mutant has no heart.”
And the taxonomists are even worse. There’s a genus of snail called Turbo. Balbaroo fangaroo is a fossil kangaroo with large canines (fangaroo, urgh).
“Diastolinus this and D. that Steiner, 2006 (darkling beetles) “The specific name ’this’ is from the Greek word meaning ‘shore’ or ‘beach’ in reference to the habitat of the beetle… .” D. that is named for the English pronoun, because it is found further away (inland) from D. this. [Zootaxa 1158: 24-29.] “
A protein in the RISC complex (oh yeah, folk just love catchy acronyms) was named R2D2 for moderately sensible reasons. When another protein was found that formed a part of this complex it was immediately named C3P0 of course.
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