3 ms·
There are lots of other strange sounding proteins in biology, e.g Dickkopf (DKK), which is german for 'thick head', because increased Dickkopf-1 makes large hea
by aquafox 4y ago
There are lots of other strange sounding proteins in biology, e.g Dickkopf (DKK), which is german for 'thick head', because increased Dickkopf-1 makes large heads in a certain tadpole species. There are also toll-like receptors ('toll' being german for 'yay'), because their discoverer, Nobel laurate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, was very excited when she found them.
- type0 4y agoa whole list of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_biological_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_biological_nam...
- culopatin 4y agoWhen Germans get excited they say “toll”?
- dodslaser 4y agoThere's a signal transduction pathway where a mitogen activated protein (MAP) is phosphorylated by a MAP kinase, which itself is phosphorylated by a MAP kinase kinase, which is phosphorylated by a MAP kinase kinase kinase, which is phosphorylated by (you guessed it) a MAP kinase kinase kinase kinase. One of my personal favorite protein names is Mothers Against Decapentaplegic. As with most of the funny gene names it was coined by drosophila researchers.