DrMachine
11-25-2006, 08:30 PM
I came across this short article in the November issue of Seed Magazine
www.seedmagazine.com
Geneticists’ habit of coming up with unique names and references for fruit fly mutants proves that we just love to put a familiar stamp on everything. Since Thomas Hung Morgan named the white-eyed Drosophila melanogaster mutant “white” –shunning the stodgier names found in other genomes (such as the yeast genome’s “cdc10” and “hac1”)- there’s been no shortage of imagination.
Ken and Barbie: Just like their Mattel counterparts, the males and females both lack external genitalia.
I’m not dead yet: Mutants have twice the average lifespan; it’s a Monty Python line
Buffy: a pro-survival protein that inhibits programmed cell death
Tinman: Like Dorothy’s oilcan companion in Oz, they haven’t got a heart – literally.
Maggie: Just like Maggie Simpson (from the Simpsons), their development is arrested.
Cheap date: Particularly sensitive to alcohol; also called “amnesiac”
Coitus interruptus: Perhaps not the females’ favorites, these male mutants copulate for 12 minutes, rather than the usual 20.
Ether a go-go: Mutants anesthetized by ether shake their legs like they oughta be wearing miniskerts
Grim and Reaper: Together, these genes mediate programmed cell death (Apoptosis).
Tudor: Like the royal Tudor family mutants don’t produce progeny.
Amontillado: Refers to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, in which a man is walled up in a catacomb to die; these mutant larva cannot hatch.
www.seedmagazine.com
Geneticists’ habit of coming up with unique names and references for fruit fly mutants proves that we just love to put a familiar stamp on everything. Since Thomas Hung Morgan named the white-eyed Drosophila melanogaster mutant “white” –shunning the stodgier names found in other genomes (such as the yeast genome’s “cdc10” and “hac1”)- there’s been no shortage of imagination.
Ken and Barbie: Just like their Mattel counterparts, the males and females both lack external genitalia.
I’m not dead yet: Mutants have twice the average lifespan; it’s a Monty Python line
Buffy: a pro-survival protein that inhibits programmed cell death
Tinman: Like Dorothy’s oilcan companion in Oz, they haven’t got a heart – literally.
Maggie: Just like Maggie Simpson (from the Simpsons), their development is arrested.
Cheap date: Particularly sensitive to alcohol; also called “amnesiac”
Coitus interruptus: Perhaps not the females’ favorites, these male mutants copulate for 12 minutes, rather than the usual 20.
Ether a go-go: Mutants anesthetized by ether shake their legs like they oughta be wearing miniskerts
Grim and Reaper: Together, these genes mediate programmed cell death (Apoptosis).
Tudor: Like the royal Tudor family mutants don’t produce progeny.
Amontillado: Refers to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, in which a man is walled up in a catacomb to die; these mutant larva cannot hatch.