4 ms·
> On the day the mice were born, scientists injected them with a small molecule known as a sonic hedgehog pathway agonist. Obviously I had to investigate a gen
by brodney 13y ago
> On the day the mice were born, scientists injected them with a small molecule known as a sonic hedgehog pathway agonist.
Obviously I had to investigate a gene called Sonic Hedgehog and how it could come to have such a name. From the wiki[0]
>The hh loss of function mutant phenotype causes the embryos to be covered with denticles (small pointy projections), resembling a hedgehog.
I'm glad to see a lack of temerity in a medical article, especially when the results seem so very promising. Nonetheless this is a really great result.
- bitwize 13y agoThe names get sillier: there's a sonic hedgehog expression inhibitor called robotnikinin, after Sonic the Hedgehog's nemesis Dr. Robotnik.
- wh-uws 13y agoI was sure you were joking until http://www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/technologies/tech.php?case=3216 http://www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/technologies/tech.php?ca... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog#Robotnikinin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog#Robotnikinin
- XorNot 13y agoThat gene as the wiki article notes is an example of why generally things in the medical community need to be given serious sounding names. No one wants to hear that the thing killing or making their child unwell has a silly name.
- solistice 13y agoOn the other hand, you can get so serious that it becomes comical again. Much laughs were had in 5th grade about the endoplasmatic reticulum, out of no reason beyond being a 5th grader. On the other hand, that's one of the only cell parts I still remember.
- flagnog 13y agoEven better: I called one of my classmates a homo sapien, he went to the teacher and complained (he thought it meant he was gay) and the teacher said "you are a homo sapien". Ah, 6th grade, good times.
- notjustanymike 13y agoDid this happen in every 6th grade? Or did we both know a guy named Walter?
- mmcnickle 13y agoChurchill would have agreed: "Operations in which large numbers of men may lose their lives ought not to be decided by code-words [...] of a frivolous character, such as 'Bunnyhug' and 'Ballyhoo.'"
- mbreese 13y agoThe silly names almost always start from the fruit-fly community. They have some of the craziest names, but they are usually derived from the resulting phenotype. However, the fruit-fly version is just called hedgehog (hh), because it results in the fruit-fly embryos looking all pointy. In this case, the funny name was added by vertebrate researchers who ran out of names when they found 3 homologs. The first two were named desert hedgehog (DHH) and Indian hedgehog (IHH). Naming the third Sonic was just too irresistible.
- polyfractal 13y agoDrosophila names are truly the best. Contrast that to C. elegans naming: dpy-5, let-37, unc-11, egl-2. The prefix means something ('unc' is uncoordinated) but otherwise very bland.
- hellrich 13y agoThose names may be funny, but they are really annoying if you try to do NLP...
- kens 13y agoDoes the DSCAM gene (Down Syndrome Cell Adhesion Molecule) fit into this picture at all? This gene is very unusual, as it gets spliced 38,000 different ways with different variants in different neurons, allowing the brain to get wired up correctly. (It's like being able to give neurons in the developing brain labels to keep track of where they go.) Since this gene is in the part of chromosome 21 that causes Down Syndrome, it seems to have an important role in Down Syndrome. But I don't see any connection between it and the current paper. Any experts who can explain more? When I read about this gene a few years ago, it seemed like a key to explaining how the brain is formed, but I haven't seen much about it since then.