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Sonic the Brain Chemical
GamerBub writes "A chemical protein that appears to prevent Parkinson's Disease has been named Sonic the Hedgehog.
According to the National Post."
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...Slashdot is over six years behind Google. D'oh, guys, D'OH!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The reason why the chemical is called Sonic Hedgehog has only a passing relation to the video game. One of the researchers was an avid video game fan and the chemical's precursors are actually: SoNiC. Hence the play on word, Sonic Hedgehog.
Plus, it has to do with increasing the speed between synapse firings.
Gene versus protein, huh?
Daarom is geen reden...
Despite what the story says, Sonic Hedgehog is an old gene. The origin of the name is that there was a gene first discovered in fruit flies which was named Hedgehog, presumably because flies missing the hedgehog gene reminded the researcher of a hedgehog. Since then, related genes have been found and given hedgehog-related names, like Desert Hedgehog and Sonic Hedgehog.
Fly geneticists like to go for amusing names. For example, there is a gene responsible for development of the 7th cell of the fly ommatidium (the ommatidia are the individual facets of the comound eye). That gene was named "sevenless". Since then, related genes have been named "bride of sevenless" and "son of sevenless", to name just two.
Sonic was mentioned on the 8th of March, 2001.
U oC M-SHst-0803101.php
And it's called Sonic Hedgehog, not Sonic THE Hedgehog.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-03/
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...