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| Organism | Gene name | Etymology |
|---|---|---|
| Drosophila melanogaster | fruity | Mutant males aren't interested in females. Later, more politically renamed as fruitless. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | grim, reaper | Grim and reaper genes together mediate programmed cell death (apoptosis) in the fruit fly. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | icebox | Female icebox mutants do not care about courting males. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | lava lamp | Movements of Golgi bodies labeled with anti-Lava antibody resemble the motions of droplets in a lava lamp. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | limo | The gene is involved in protein transport. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | long island expressway | Sperm cells of the mutant flies are elongated. Long Island Expressway is a long highway in New York. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | lush | Mutation causes increased affection to alcohol. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | mothers against decapentaplegic | Represses decapentaplegic activity. Mutation in mother affects developing embryos. American mothers are famous for founding organizations opposing, well, many things. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | noose | The gene interacts with string. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | out cold | With falling temperature, the mutants lose their coordination, and are eventually paralyzed. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | pray for elves | Suzan Lewis, working in the FlyBase release 3 annotation project, writes about naming the gene: "It is the middle of the night (2:38 to be precise), I am away from friends and family, It has been this way for over 2 years, I can't sleep because of all the work there is yet to do, and there is no end in sight. So when do the magic little elves appear out of nowhere and get everything done?" |
| Drosophila melanogaster | ring | Since the authors didn't know the function of their gene, they named it RING - "Really Interesting New Gene". Appropriately, a domain in the protein was later named RING finger. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | stuck | Mutant males get stuck in females. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | sunday driver | Neuronal molecule traffic is mixed up in mutants. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | swiss cheese | Mutant flies' brains have swiss-cheese-like holes. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | technical knockout | Mutants are sensitive to mechanical shock. They fall over and are temporarily paralyzed. |
| Drosophila melanogaster | half pint | Cheryl Van Buskirk writes: "The mutant ovaries produce egg chambers that contain eight instead of sixteen cells. Since there are 16oz in a pint, we figured it was a pretty fitting name. Half pint is also an informal term for a very short person, and it so happens that the mutant eggs were indeed quite short. Sadly, the official gene name has since become Dmel/pUf68, based on its molecular weight and homology to poly-U binding splicing factors, and the name half pint is considered a synonym." |
| Escherichia coli | mazEF | After the Hebrew term 'Ma Ze' ('What is it?'). Later discovered to encode an addiction molecule. |
| Haemophilus influenzae | fucK | The fuculokinase gene of this bacterium is known of this clever abbreviation. |
| Homo sapiens | hip, hop | Hip and hop gene products help other proteins to fold correctly. That is, many proteins require them to acquire the correct 3D structure. For those in doubt, Mc Hawking proves that science and hiphop belong inseparably together. (The primary official names listed by HUGO for these genes are almost equally humorous ST13 and STIP1.) |
| Homo sapiens | JAK-1 | Abbreviation for janus kinase. The gene codes an essential kinase (= an enzyme phosphorylating other proteins) that functions in the internal signalling system of cells. In the Janus kinases, there are two phosphate-transferring domains. Thus, it got its name from the Roman two-faced gatekeeper of the heaven Janus. |
| Homo sapiens | mad, max | Proteins coded by mad and max bind to each other and take care that genes do not work at the wrong time. Mad Max (Mel Gibson) was on the good side, as well. |
| Homo sapiens | pokemon | One of the POK genes (encoding proteins which turn off other genes): POK Erythroid Myeloid Ontogenic factor. Pokemon is an oncogene: if it is mutated, it can cause cancer. In fact, it appears to be a master switch for cancer. |
| Homo sapiens | sonic hedgehog | The gene was first found in fruit fly. It was named hedgehog, as the mutant larvae resembled a hedgehog. One of the human hedgehog genes was named sonic hedgehog, according to the Sega computer game character. |
| Homo sapiens | tigger | Tigger is a transposable element in the human genome, i.e. it can jump to another location in the genome. Tigger, in A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, was a bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy character. |
| Homo sapiens | ARSE | This is the handy official symbol of the arylsulfatase E gene. |
| Homo sapiens | MT1 | This stands for at least eleven different genes in the human. |
| Homo sapiens | TNFRSF1B | This jolly gene (full name: tumor necrosis factor receptor subfamily, member 1B) is also known as TNFR2, TNFBR, TNFR-75 kD, TNFR-80 kD, p75TNFR, p75 and CD120b. In other words, quite normal for a human gene. |
| Homo sapiens | SEMA5A | The full name of this gene is "sema domain, seven thrombospondin repeats (type 1 and type 1-like), transmembrane domain (TM) and short cytoplasmic domain, (semaphorin) 5A". When a new gene is found, often all that is known of it is that it resembles some other genes. So, it easily gets named "gene like this and that gene", like this one involved in axonal guidance. Fortunately, this gene is usually called just SEMA5A, which is its official short symbol. |
| Luciola lateralis | luciferase | Luciferase is a common name for enzymes that catalyze reactions producing light. The name luciferase was coined by the German electrophysiologist Emil Heinrich DuBois-Reymond. Lucifer, the fallen angel, is also known as the light-giver. |
| Ovis aries | callipyge | Mutant sheep have huge, muscular bottoms. Callipyge (greek) means "beautiful buttocks". |
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae | ZZZ1 | A yeast gene involved somehow in sleep (???): the mutants respond differently to volatile anesthetics. |
| Schistocerca americana | lazarillo | The gene guides growing nerve axons in grasshopper. Lazarillo earns his living by guiding a blind person in a 16. century Spanish novel by an anonymous author "La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades contadas por el mismo" or "The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, his fortunes and misfortunes as told by himself." |
| Schizosaccharomyces pombe | wee1 | Yeast gene names consist of just three letters and a number. So, one must be pretty clever to put something descriptive in the name. Like the discoverer of this gene: wee1 mutants divide sooner than they should, so they are wee small. |