WHILE many geneticists make do with unpronounceable strings of letters and digits to name their discoveries, by tradition fruit-fly folk get to call them what they like.
One of their better-known examples is Sonic Hedgehog, which came about when researchers ran out of real hedgehog names for a family of genes for spikiness and, no doubt with a total absence of hilarity, plumped for a video-game character.
But there is another fruit-fly name that has apparently been lurking in the labs for quite some time without us knowing it. Step forward the I’m not dead yet…
