3. The protein shake-up
Staying on the topics of nomenclature and proteins, one of the most famous landmarks at this intersection is the protein called Sonic Hedgehog. The story goes that fruit fly larvae bearing a particular mutation were spiky in appearance, like hedgehogs, hence the offending gene was named Hedgehog. In vertebrates, three Hedgehog genes with similar functions were eventually discovered and given the names Indian Hedgehog, Desert Hedgehog and Common European Hedgehog.
Coincidentally, around the time of their discovery, Sega was rolling out a game with a spiky blue hedgehog named Sonic as its main protagonist. The Common European Hedgehog protein was thus renamed Sonic Hedgehog instead.
Another videogame character-inspired protein is Pikachurin, named after Pikachu, the famous yellow Pokémon. There even used to be a protein called Pokémon, but it has since been renamed Zbtb7 after Pokémon USA threatened to sue because it didn’t want its franchise to be associated with a potential cancer-causing gene. Sadly, that may have been the one time someone actually understood a science joke.
4. I herd it from the grapevine
Collective nouns are indispensable for pointing out groups of things, whether they be items, animals or people. A wad of banknotes, a congress of baboons, a… what of scientists?
Well, if you search #scientistherdnames on Twitter, you’ll find that the scientific community really dug deep into their creativity coffers when they came up with collective nouns for themselves based on their field of study. My personal favorites are “a culture of microbiologists,” “an uncertain number of quantum physicists” and “a stream of urologists.”
Apparently, these shenanigans were sparked off by a certain National Institutes of Health researcher on his personal webpage. His post went viral and the outcomes were hilarious. For people like me without a Twitter account, have a look at this website for some of the honorable mentions.
Science is a serious affair. For those doing it, remember this: a PhD only entitles you to prescribe laughter as medicine. May you find mirth in the mundane and fun in your fact-finding.
This article is from a monthly column called Hacking a PhD. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
———
Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Imgflip.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
