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.
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