Buffy The Vampire Slayer

ST. LOUIS - (KRT) - Here’s a riddle: What do the Bible, Pavlov’s dogs, Vincent van Gogh, Barbie dolls, video games and the Flying Wallendas have in common?

The answer: Fruit flies.

All have served as the inspiration for scientists naming newly discovered genes in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.

Fruit fly researchers try to be creative when naming new genes. Names are chosen to reflect the way a fly looks or behaves when a particular gene is mutated. The scientists often draw on popular culture, art, literature and history for apt descriptions.

Washington University neuroscientists Aaron DiAntonio and Catherine Collins took their inspiration from the circus. Collins named a gene "Wallenda" after the Flying Wallendas, a family of acrobats and tightrope walkers who famously perform without a net.

Tino Wallenda brought his wife, son and daughter to DiAntonio’s lab recently to meet their namesake fruit flies. The scientists regaled the family with the tale of how the acrobats were given what Tino Wallenda deems perhaps the most unusual honor bestowed on the family.

Collins was studying the effect of a gene called Highwire. When mutated, Highwire causes neurons to produce extra large, abnormal synapses - sites where neurons communicate with each other. The mutation made the flies stumble around, surely unable to walk a highwire, DiAntonio said.

But mutations in Wallenda fix the defects caused by highwire, restoring coordination to the flies.

"Since Wallenda does such a great job with the Highwire mutant, and you guys, obviously, do such a great job on the highwire, the name just seemed appropriate," DiAntonio told the performers.

The Wallendas are not the only famous people to have fruit fly genes named for them, nor is it the most unusual name for a gene, scientists say.

"There’s actually a lot of bizarre names, some of which haven’t been allowed to stick," said Ross Cagan, a fruit fly geneticist at Washington University. Some names are deemed too tasteless, but more often a moniker is rejected because someone else named the gene first.

Cagan’s lab chose to name a gene that causes flies to die, Borg, after the ruthless cyborg villains from Star Trek. But another research group had already published a paper calling the same gene Buffy, for the teenage vampire slayer. Some scientific papers refer to the gene by both names, but Buffy is replacing Borg with most researchers, Cagan said.

Fruit fly researchers pride themselves on creative naming, said Tanya Wolff, another fruit fly geneticist at Washington University. When her lab discovered a gene that caused the fly’s 800 compound eyes to point in different directions, she turned to her cultured father for naming advice. Wolff hoped to name the gene for a painting of a cross-eyed person, but her father couldn’t think of any such artwork. He suggested Strabismus, the medical term for crossed eyes. Wolff liked it and the name stuck.

Geneticists in other fields don’t resort to whimsy and humor the way fruit fly researchers do, Cagan said.

"There’s a feeling among (researchers who work with) other model animal systems that it’s not serious enough or scientific enough," Cagan said.

Instead, scientists who work with animals, such as worms, choose staid names like unc (for uncoordinated) and give all of the hundreds of genes that lead to uncoordinated roundworms a number.

"There’s no point to that system. I actually think it’s unscientific. It’s much easier to remember what the genes do" when given a humorous or clever name, Cagan said.

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SOME FRUIT FLY GENE NAMES AND THEIR INSPIRATION:

Lot - Flies with mutations in the Lot gene like salt more than usual. The biblical figure, Lot, had a wife who was turned to salt when she peeked over her shoulder at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra.

Cheap Date - Flies with mutations in the gene are more susceptible to alcohol.

Ken and Barbie - Flies with mutations in the gene lack genitalia just like the famously anatomically incorrect dolls.

Ether a Go-go - Flies with mutations in the gene shake their legs like go-go dancers when anesthetized with ether.