Naming Conventions

Geneticists are typically geeky (particularly those of that started out as fruit fly geneticists); once someone starts a fashion, people follow on. And that’s how it was with the naming of our genes.

My latest: phoenix

Jackson’s: joust

We name them after video games. Of course, it all began with the Atari back in the eighties. For example, there’s a gene called ‘sevenless’, because when it doesn’t work properly, segment number seven in the fly’s body is missing.

Following that a few geneticists discovered other bits of DNA, genes with similar sequences, and called them things like ‘son of sevenless’, ‘bride of sevenless’.

With Jackson’s, I know that someone named a kind of gene from the fruit fly after an eighties Atari game; ‘Frogger’, I think it was. So when he was looking for a name for his gene, which was sort of similar in that it is a ‘jumping gene’, he called it ‘joust’.

Mine, similarly jumps, hence 'phoenix'.