What About Hedgehog, Buttonhead, and Bride of Sevenless?
09/07/10 03:06 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 07/09/2010 - 03:06.
The fanciful naming of genes by the Drosophila community may provide better recall, but I suspect that it also serves to flag the these gene as other examples of fly genes that have counterparts in humans and other species. This is no longer very surprising. While many fly genes are often widely expressed in other species, they are commonly regulated quite distinctly and have different substrates and functions depending on the species. Naming a gene after a resultant phenotype in a mutant gene form is probably not much better. Naming genes after their basic functions of their encoded proteins or due to the presence of a recognizable functional domain would be the most desirable. At least the colourful naming of genes by fly researchers demonstrates that scientists do have a sense of humour.
Link to the original blog post.
The fanciful naming of genes by the Drosophila community may provide better recall, but I suspect that it also serves to flag the these gene as other examples of fly genes that have counterparts in humans and other species. This is no longer very surprising. While many fly genes are often widely expressed in other species, they are commonly regulated quite distinctly and have different substrates and functions depending on the species. Naming a gene after a resultant phenotype in a mutant gene form is probably not much better. Naming genes after their basic functions of their encoded proteins or due to the presence of a recognizable functional domain would be the most desirable. At least the colourful naming of genes by fly researchers demonstrates that scientists do have a sense of humour.
Link to the original blog post.