Human Geneticists Suck

That's right: if you study human genetics, you suck. In relation to Drosophila geneticists, of course. You see, human geneticists are boring. Drosophila geneticists come up with clever names for genes. When the homologues are identified in humans, the names are deemed offensive and inappropriate. Apparently, patients don't like being told they have a mutation in the lunatic fringe gene. Or sonic hedgehog. Or mothers against decapentaplegia. This is according to an article in Nature.

Maybe I don't know jack about bedside manner, but I can appreciate the amount of thought that goes into naming Drosophila genes. For example, check out the story behind a chimeric gene identified by Manyuan Long and colleagues:

In an ancient Chinese legend, the first Chinese emperor Yande (3,000 BC) brother to the Yellow-Emperor, had a pretty princess named Jingwei. Like other legendary southern Chinese goddesses, Jingwei liked to swim. Unfortunately, she drowned in the East China Sea. She was reincarnated into a beautiful bird, who, to save others from possible tragedy, carried soil and stones in an attempt to fill in the ocean. The new gene was named jingwei because it was first thought to be a pseudogene and was then 'reincarnated' as a new functional gene with a new structure. To be consistent, other related genes were named following this legend.

The new chimeric gene is named jingwei, and the old gene from which jingwei arose is named yellow-emperor. It's this kind of commitment to gene naming that should envied by the human geneticists, not discouraged.