In the United States, there is now a growing movement to ban the dangerous chemical “dihydrogen monoxide”. What is this chemical? Dihydrogen monoxide is widely used in industry for processing, washing, diluting, cooling, or transporting a variety of products. Specifically, it is used by smelting facilities, petroleum refineries, and industries producing metal, chemical, and paper products, but most alarmingly, it is also widely used by the food industry. So what is the problem with this chemical? The problem is that it can kill people! Accidental inhalation of dihydrogen monoxide kills several thousand Americans every year and over 2 million people worldwide. Oral ingestion of dihydrogen monoxide can result in dihydrogen monoxide intoxication which is characterized by headaches, confusion and disorientation, and nausea and vomiting. If left untreated, dihydrogen monoxide intoxication may lead to muscle weakness, spasms or cramps, and can cause seizures and loss of consciousness. Exposure to the solid form of dihydrogen monoxide can cause serious tissue damage. Pure dihydrogen monoxide injected intravenously to laboratory rats or mice will kill them. Despite the above, get ready for this, there is no urgency whatsoever in the government to ban this chemical. It is dumped legally (!) as a waste product by multiple industries into our rivers and lakes, and even into the ocean. Dihydrogen monoxide in the environment contributes to global warming, and to the erosion of the landscape. It causes corrosion of metals, electrical failures, and millions of dollars in property damage each year. The acid form of dihydrogen monoxide (hydroxyl acid) is a component of acid rain which destroys our forests. The presence of dihydrogen monoxide can be detected in wildlife and in our own bodies! Enough is enough! The time has come to ban the use of dihydrogen monoxide for good. Will you join our group of concerned citizens, donate to our cause, and help us pressure our government to vanish the use this dangerous chemical? Let me answer that question for you. The answer is: NO. Why? Because dihydrogen monoxide is one of the chemical names of “water”. What I wrote in this post about dihydrogen monoxide is just my version of a recurrent hoax /joke that has been going around for decades, and is meant to illustrate how the lack of scientific literacy, and the phrasing of alarmist claims, can affect public opinion. In the most extreme forms of this hoax, people are requested to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, which often leads to the collection of many of signatures. Choosing the right words, and saying things about any chemical in the right way, can make it look scary, and in this case, I didn’t even have to lie. Everything I wrote is true. For example, accidental inhalation of water can kill people (it’s called drowning), excessive ingestion of water can be hazardous (it’s called over hydration; there is a method of torture based on this), formation of water crystals (ice: solid form of water) inside the cells of your tissues can damage them (frostbite), and injection of the right amount of pure water into animals can wreak havoc on the body’s electrolyte balance and kill them. In today’s vast scientific literature, where virtually every chemical has been tested in one way or another, it is very difficult not to find examples of a chemical having a deleterious effect on some parameter of some biological model. And with today’s unparalleled access to information, people who believe they know more than the experts can set out on a crusade against any chemical. All they have to do is pick and choose studies from the scientific literature, without any regard for their quality or relevance, and weave them into a narrative using innuendo and questionable association to other compounds, which will cast the chemical in the worst possible light. This approach combined with the right mix of emotions, exploitation of human suffering, and politics can prove very effective, and is not unlike selling snake oil. A famous case of the above strategy is when those opposed to vaccination waged a campaign against the chemical thimerosal which was alleged to cause autism. Thimerosal is a chemical that was used in many vaccines to prevent the growth of germs. Once inside the body, thimerosal is degraded to a derivative of mercury called ethylmercury. Mercury by itself or in the form of methylmercury is toxic, but ethylmercury is not toxic at the levels delivered by vaccines and is cleared from the body faster than methylmercury. In many cases, the anti-vaccine popular literature engaged in the innuendo that because mercury is toxic and thimerosal contains mercury, then thimerosal must be toxic. However, the toxicity of an element like mercury is heavily dependent on the way it is combined with other elements in chemical compounds. For example, the explosive elemental sodium (Na) and the extremely toxic chlorine (Cl), when combined with each other form the innocuous NaCl which is table salt. The pressure to ban thimerosal kept mounting, and the US Public Health Service decided to request that vaccine companies remove thimerosal from most childhood vaccines in 1999 as a precautionary measure to decrease overall exposure in infants to mercury derivatives. However, the best designed studies did not find any conclusive association between thimerosal (or vaccines for that matter) and autism. After thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines, the number of cases of autism has kept on increasing, indicating that thimerosal in vaccines was not responsible for this trend. However, none of this has been accepted by the anti-vaccine community, which is busy at work convincing more and more parents not to vaccinate their children and peddling conspiracy theories. Not unexpectedly, the number of measles cases in the United States has reached an all-time high since it was seemingly eliminated in 2000. This is not to say that there aren’t legitimate cases where the public should be concerned about the use of certain chemicals in medicine and industry, or instances where politics or other influences have vitiated the established procedures to determine safety. But the answer is not to stoke people’s fears, enshrine faulty science as truth, and disavow the assessment of experts on complex scientific issues claiming they have “sold out” if they do not support alarmist theories. The dihydrogen monoxide hoax is a joke, but what happened to thimerosal isn’t. Our life is better today thanks to thousands of medicines and chemicals produced by our pharmaceutical companies and industries. If we are concerned about the safety of these products, we should work with our scientific and medical organizations, not against them. Human nature is flawed. There will always be individuals who will engage in deceit, but the vast majority of scientists are principled people who will accept the evidence when it is clear and reproducible. The image from Pixabay is licensed for public use. The image of thimerosal by vaccinationist was taken from PubChem and is in the public domain.
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It’s time to lighten up my blog a bit. Every area of human endeavor develops jokes that rely on specialized knowledge, and science is not an exception. So without further ado, I present to you some of my favorite science jokes with the accompanying technical explanation. Psychoanalysis The critic said that the problem with Freud is that none of his theories are testicle. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed that “slips of the tongue” or “Freudian slips” occurred because the subconscious mind would transfer thoughts to the conscious mind. He thought these slips revealed what was really in the person’s mind when they were talking. In the case above, the intended word was “testable”. Plant Biochemistry
A plant biochemist walks into a gardening store. He asks the clerk, “Do you have that inhibitor of enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase?" The clerk frowns and replies, “Do you mean, roundup?” The biochemist hits his forehead with the open palm of his hand and exclaims, “Yes, sheez, I can never remember that name!” Enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase is an enzyme necessary for plants to convert sugars to many compounds vital for life. The herbicide roundup (a glyphosate derivative) inhibits the activity of this enzyme, thus killing the plant. Behavior Science Q: Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? A: No, but it makes me salivate. Ivan Pavlov performed a series of famous experiments where he made dogs associate the presentation of food with the ringing of a bell. The dogs then would salivate in response to the sound of the bell, even if food was not presented. This is known today as classical conditioning. Neuroscience Q: What are the two things all people enjoy? A: Serotonin and dopamine All pleasurable feelings are generated in the brain by systems of neurons that, upon activation, release the neurotransmitters serotonin or dopamine. Therefore, technically speaking, when you enjoy something you are really enjoying the release of these two chemicals which produce and maintain the pleasurable sensation. Math An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one says, “I’ll have one beer.” The second says, “I’ll have half a beer.” The third one says, “I’ll have a fourth of a beer.” The fourth one says, “I’ll have an eighth of a beer.” The bartender interrupts, saying, “You guys should know your limits.” and pours two beers. The joke is based on an exponential function that has an asymptote that approaches a limit at infinity. After the first mathematician orders one beer, it can be shown that even if millions of mathematicians successively order a volume of beer which is half of that ordered by the previous one, all these volumes added together will approach one whole beer at infinity. Therefore the one beer ordered by the first plus the total volume of beer ordered by the rest for all practical purposes equals two beers. Quantum Physics Werner Heisenberg and Edwin Schrodinger are driving down the highway and they get stopped by a cop. The cop says to Heisenberg, “Do you know how fast you were driving?” Heisenberg replies, “No, but I can tell you where I am.” The cop says, “You were doing 90 miles per hour in a 55 miles per hour zone.” Heisenberg replies, “Oh no, now I’m lost!” Puzzled, the cop tells them to get out of the car and begins searching it. He finds a dead cat in the trunk, and says, “Do you know you have a dead cat here?” Schrodinger answers, “Now I do!” The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that either the speed or the location of a particle can be known, but not both. Schrodinger’s Cat is a famous thought experiment meant to be critical of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics which states that particles exist not in one state, but in a superposition of possible states until they are observed. Schrodinger’s experiment linked this interpretation to a cat in a box whose life depends on the state of a particle, leading to the inference that, until the box is opened and the cat is observed, the cat is neither dead nor alive, but both. Two additional jokes based on this premise are: Schrodinger’s Cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t. Wanted, dead and alive: Schrodinger's cat. Chemistry A chemist walks into a candy store, and says, “Do you have some Carbon-Holmium-Cobalt-Lanthanum-Tellurium?” The clerk nods his head and hands him a bar of chocolate. The chemical symbols in the periodic table for these elements are, Carbon (C) Holmium (Ho) Cobalt (Co) Lanthanum (La) and Tellurium (Te). A related joke based on a similar premise is: A chemist asks an attractive woman if she is full of beryllium, gold, and titanium because she is be-au-ti-ful! The chemical symbols are: beryllium (Be), gold (Au), and titanium (Ti). And one more chemistry joke: Two atoms are walking down the street, and one says, “Oh dear, I think I’ve lost an electron. The second atom says, “Are you sure?” The first one replies, “Yes, I’m positive.” When an atom loses an electron, it acquires a positive charge. Topology Q. Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip? A. To get to the same side. A Möbius strip is a ribbon that only has one side. Microbiology The microbiology lab has a sign on the door which reads: “STAPH ONLY”. Staph, is an abbreviation of Staphylococcus, a genus of bacteria that may cause infections in humans. Here it is used as a pun for “Staff”. Computer Science There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t. Computers operate using a binary (base 2) language made up of zeros and ones. The number 2 in binary is “10”. Astronomy Basic astronomy exam trick question: How many weeks are there in a light year? Answer: None, a light year is a unit of distance (the distance light travels in a year) not of time. Cell Biology The math teacher says, “Multiplication and division are two different functions.” A cell sitting in the front of the class raises its pseudopod and says, “Not for me.” To reproduce, cells multiply, and this involves dividing to form new cells. Biology A mushroom walks into a bar, sits next to a woman, and says, “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” The woman gives him a dismissive look, and asks, “Who are you?” The mushroom replies, “I’m a fungi.” Here the plural of fungus, fungi (also the phyletic classification of the Kingdom “Fungi”) is used as a pun for “fun guy”. Mushrooms are fungi. Note: these are jokes I’ve heard or read “here and there”. I have no idea who the original authors are, or if they are copyrighted. If that is the case, and you don’t want me to feature your joke here or you want me to attribute it, please let me know. Photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt is in the public domain and was modified from the original. Some individuals want to be professional mad scientists, but they are unwilling to go through the arduous scientific training that all scientists have to complete. Even mad scientists need to know their stuff, and they have to be able to distinguish fact from fiction to a certain extent. Take for example the case of Frank Nicolas Stein. This guy was an amateur scientist who initially decided to go by the book. He bought an old castle towering above a quaint small village. He got himself an assistant with a limp and a hump on his back (except his name was Steve, not Igor). He and Steve raided the local cemetery for freshly interred corpses, stitched parts of them together (including, of course, an Abby-Normal brain) to form a deformed creature, and finally zapped it with a zillion volts during a ghastly storm. The result? Nothing. The whole premise behind the Frankenstein story is a myth. Dead tissue exposed to electric current does not come back to life. It remains as dead as a dead parrot. Frank realized that he had wasted all those hours rehearsing in front of the mirror screaming over and over, “It’s alive!” and laughing manically. To add insult to injury he was captured, not by an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, as would have happened to any deserving mad scientist, but rather just by the local sheriff and his deputy. Mr. Stein was sent to jail for a year (Steve was just slapped for 2 minutes and then let go). Imagine the humiliation! But Frank plotted his revenge. When he left jail, he decided he would poison the villagers to make them pay for what they did to him. To this end he purchased in the black market two of the most lethal substances known to mankind. The first of these was the extremely toxic chlorine gas which was used as a chemical weapon during World War I. The second was elemental sodium, a compound so reactive that its mere interaction with water produces dramatic explosions that release a huge amount of heat. Frank’s master plan was that he would combine these two toxic substances into a lethal mix the likes of which the world had never seen, and he would release it into the village’s drinking water! Frank rehired Steve, and also hired a few of his ne'er-do-well friends. For several days they toiled away in an abandoned warehouse mixing large quantities of both substances which to his delight produced spectacular ceiling-high yellow flames! Such was the power of this accursed mix of chemicals. The reaction yielded a white product which he, mindful of its deadly power, carefully collected and stored in vacuum sealed flasks. When his dastardly work was done, Frank transported a truck loaded with the white chemical to the source of the town’s drinking water at a late hour of the night. He and his minions broke into the facility, subdued its only guard, and proceeded to release the poison into the water while laughing maniacally. The result? Nothing. The people of the town woke up noticing that their drinking water tasted “salty”, but that was about it. No deaths, no poisoning, not even an upset stomach. The sheriff was called, and he and his deputy made their way to the water plant in time to arrest Frank, who upon seeing them screamed, “Not you again!” Mr. Stein was once more sent to languish in jail, humiliated and despondent (this time though, Steve and his cronies kept him company). What happened? Sodium is indeed extremely reactive because the sodium atom has a free electron in its outer shell that it will share with any other chemical compound that accepts it. Chlorine, on the other hand is a very strong oxidizing agent, which means it will take an electron away from other chemicals. So when you put them together, sodium very naturally cedes its outermost electron to chlorine in a reaction that releases a lot of heat. The result of this reaction is a sodium atom lacking an electron and thus bearing a positive charge, and a chlorine atom with an extra electron which confers it a negative charge. This transformation dramatically changes the nature of these elements. The explosive sodium and the toxic chlorine become the innocuous sodium chloride, in other words: table salt. This was the white powder that Frank released into the village’s drinking water supply! This story is meant to illustrate that we should not make assumptions regarding the properties of a compound just based on the properties of a few of its components in isolation. However, many people do not understand this concept. In 2017 a video showing a towering structure emerging from an amalgamation reaction between a block of aluminum and a drop of mercury went viral on the internet (check the dramatic effect beginning at 2 minutes). Then an anti-vaccine Facebook page posted a scare-mongering rhetorical question alluding to the video: “Hmmm… What mandated medical injections also combine thimerosal (mercury), which still remains in several vaccines and aluminium, used in almost all vaccines? It’s time to reject vaccine MYTH and embrace the truth.” This post made a reference to 2 components of some vaccines, a mercury derivative called thimerosal, and an aluminum derivative called aluminum phosphate. The implication of course is that if these 2 things (mercury and aluminum) can produce the reaction shown in the video, what awful things will happen inside your body if you get inoculated with vaccines that contain these 2 items? The short answer: nothing. This anti-vaccine post was debunked by sites like Snopes which, among other arguments, pointed out that the reaction in the video had been between elemental mercury and elemental aluminum. However, the mercury and aluminum components of vaccines are not pure elements but rather chemical derivatives. Much in the same way that the sodium and the chloride in sodium chloride have chemical properties that are very different from those of the pure elemental forms (sodium and chlorine), the mercury in thimerosal and the aluminum in aluminum phosphate behave very differently from the pure forms of these elements. This is not the first time that anti-vaccination proponents have raised false alarms, but with respect to this one they should have read a chemistry book, or at least asked, Frank. He has learned this the hard way! Mad scientist caricature by J.J. used here under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license. 11/22/2018 Chemical nomenclature and Asimov on Speaking Gaelic - The Irish Washerwoman and Para-dimethylaminobenzaldehydeRead NowFor non-chemists, and even for many scientists, chemical names can be particularly vexing. Take for example the compound para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde (pronounced: PA-ruh-dy-METH-il-a-MEE-nohben-ZAL-duh-hide). I mean, seriously, if the average person were walking down the street and somebody yelled “PA-ruh-dy-METH-il-a-MEE-nohben-ZAL-duh-hide” at them, they would probably reply with anything from “Watch your language” to “Up yours”! As it turns out this chemical is also known as Ehrlich's reagent, after the German Nobel Prize winning Physician who discovered it, Paul Ehrlich. Para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde has a long and distinguished history where it has been used in various analytical, chemical, biochemical, and industrial applications. So why not call it Ehrlich’s reagent and simplify things? Well, some scientist do, but the advantage of using the chemical name is that any scientist familiar with the rules of chemical nomenclature will know what compound you are talking about even if they have never seen it before in their lives. This is because every single syllable in para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde has information regarding the chemical groups that make up this compound and how they are bonded together. And not only that, each of these words has a fascinating history as to their origin and the many permutations that they went through before coming to symbolize the chemical entities they represent today. Still, you may argue that para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde sounds Greek to you; or perhaps “Gaelic”? Back in March of 1963, the science fiction writer extraordinaire Isaac Asimov published a remarkable article in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Although the article was referred to by the editors as “one of Dr. Asimov’s insufferably tedious articles”, it traced the amazing story of the origin of each section of the name para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde. In the article, Asimov relates that way back when he was a practicing scientist he went to the reagent shelf to search for this chemical and asked a person if they had some. This person tried to be whimsical at his expense (which was a no-no when it came to the great Isaac Asimov) by singing the name of the chemical to the tune of the traditional Irish jig “The Irish Washerwoman”. Asimov, of course, put him in his place, but he couldn’t shake the melody from his head, and found himself singing over and over para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde to the tune of the "Irish Washerwoman", sometimes out loud. Once he did this in an office in the presence of an Irish receptionist, who then commended him for singing the words of the melody in the original Gaelic language! Asimov then undertakes the task of teaching his readers to “speak Gaelic” by which he means to pronounce chemical names. For this he dives into the rich and complex history of the chemical nomenclature behind para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde that spans several centuries of human cultural and technological developments. It is a fantastic tale that takes the reader from the islands of Sumatra and Java in Southeast Asia, to the temples erected in Egypt to the God Amun, and to the laboratories of leading chemists in Germany, England, Sweden, and France. It is a story involving women’s makeup and camel dung, Greek prefixes and philosophers, Arabic traders and alchemists, and of course, wood alcohol. I encourage you to read the original article in page 72 of the magazine. It is a delightful piece that reveals the sheer wonder behind what otherwise appears to be a cryptic and boring science word, and which also showcases the mastery and scientific knowledge of Asimov. Remember that he wrote this in 1963 before the internet was available to search for information. In view of the foregoing, it is only fitting that John Carroll has composed a drinking song (The Chemist’s Drinking Song) inspired by Asimov’s story to the tune of “The Irish Washerwoman” with lyrics that incorporate the word: para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde. In case the song is too fast for you to appreciate, there is also a slower version with slightly altered lyrics and some visuals that you can watch below. Asimov passed away in 1992, but his wit and brilliance are still with us in the 500 plus fiction and non-fiction books that he wrote or edited. The chemical formula by Rifleman 82 is in the public domain. Asimov’s Photograph from the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection is in the public domain. A warning to my more sensitive readers: This post contains some rude terms and juvenile humor! “Get you mind out of the gutter!” is a common exhortation used on a person who interprets things or thinks about things in indecent ways. In our culture, having your mind in the gutter is clearly considered to be something negative. However, sometimes having your mind in the gutter, or having someone around with their mind in the gutter, can actually be an advantage. How can this be? A joke in the biotech industry involves the owner of a genetics company who is thinking about the name he should give to a new branch of the company that he is planning to open in Italy. The owner innocently decides that because his company is a genetics company, and because the new branch is opening in Italy, he will call the new branch of the company "Gen-Italia". It is in situations like these where having someone around with their minds in the gutter can be useful to spot the vagaries of language and slang. The above is just a joke, but consider the true story of a company called “Custom Service Chemicals”. Back in 1964 they paid a marketing firm to suggest a new name for them. The marketing firm came up with a combination of the words “Analytical” and Technology” which perfectly described what the company was doing, and thus they changed their name to “Analytical Technologies”, which they fatefully proceeded to abbreviate to “AnalTech”. Apparently no one involved in the name-change operation had their mind in the gutter to spot the obvious problem with the new name. As a result of this, the company has been the butt of jokes (get it?) for all of its existence culminating in one memorable episode in 2017 when newspapers reported that a truck had plowed into AnalTech creating a hole which released an odor that led to a HazMat situation. The company has sometimes complained about the puerile humor it is subject to, but they get no sympathy from me! However, the AnalTech story is nothing compared to the fiasco that beset no other than the company Pfizer. Pfizer is a pharmaceutical giant with 90,000 employees selling products in 90 international markets and generating billions of dollars in profits. This is the company that brought us penicillin and Viagra. Pfizer normally functions like a well-oiled machine when it comes to advertising their drugs, but in 2012 they experienced a major breakdown. At the time Pfizer had come up with a drug for osteoarthritis in dogs called Rimadyl, and they wanted to put together a marketing campaign to promote it. Unfortunately there was no one in their marketing team with their mind in the gutter to enlighten them. Thus it was that to encourage people to use Rimadyl on their ailing dogs, they invited their customers to “rim-a-dog”; in other words, apply Rimadyl to their canine friends. Pfizer even created a long-gone website: rimadog.com. Alas, if someone had even made a cursory search of possible slang meanings of the verb “to rim” they would have averted the catastrophe. In response to the public outcry from dog lovers, Pfizer apologized and modified their marketing of Rymadyl, but it was too late. They had already left a permanent mark in the annals (sorry, couldn’t resist using that word) of botched marketing campaigns. Sometimes what happens is that the people involved in coining a problematic name are foreign individuals who are not well acquainted with American slang. The Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi discovered vitamin-C and found that paprika contained large amounts of it. This was a godsend to the depressed economy of the Hungarian town of Szeged where Szent-Györgyi resided in the early 1930s. Merchants and scientists joined forces to produce and sell a paste derived from paprika which was christened “vitapric”. Sales of the paste were so good in Europe that Szent-Györgyi and his colleagues wanted to sell vitapric in the United States. Luckily for them, someone with their mind in the gutter advised them to change the name of the product! However, a group of Chinese researchers were not that fortunate. Dachi Yang, Guowen Meng, Shuyuan Zhang, Yufeng Hao, Xiaohong An, Qing Wei, Min Yeab and Lide Zhang discovered a method to make very small tubes (nanotubes) using metals like bismuth and copper. To name their creations they used the abbreviation for the word nanotubes “NT” preceded by the chemical symbols of bismuth (Bi) and cooper (Cu). Thus they referred to bismuth nanotubes as “BiNTs”, and cooper nanotubes as “CuNTs”. But what really cemented the fame of this Chinese group for posterity was that they wrote up the results and got them published in a mainstream English language scientific journal. Thus in their paper entitled “Electrochemical synthesis of metal and semimetal nanotube–nanowire heterojunctions and their electronic transport properties” you find no less than 12 references to “BiNT/s” and 50 references to “CuNT/s”. It seems that not a single person with their mind in the gutter was involved in the process of review and editing of the paper. Adding insult to injury, the Chinese research group received the 2007 Vulture Vulgar Acronym (VULVA) award from the British technology news and opinion website The Register. Of course, it’s not always a foreigner unacquainted with English slang who dreams up these terms. In 1972 doctors Alexander Pines, Michael Gibby, and John Waugh developed a new procedure for high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) of rare isotopes and chemically dilute spins in solids. This was a significant breakthrough because up to that moment NMR could only be applied to liquids. But then the authors proceeded to name their new technique: Proton Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy. The problem with this name is, of course, the acronym. These naughty scientists went on to publish scientific articles where the name of the technique was prominently displayed in the tittle. It seems that no reviewer or editor with their mind in the gutter caught on to the joke. For the sake of decency most scientists nowadays refer to the technique as “cross-polarization”. While the name for the NMR technique was intended, some rude acronyms may have just arisen unintentionally from names put forward by people with insufficiently dirty minds. Thus the short denomination for the enzyme argininosuccinate synthetase is “ASS”, the cell culture substrate poly-L-ornithine is abbreviated as “PORN”, and the muscle relaxant and murder weapon, Suxamethonium chloride, is called “Sux”. Some scientific disciplines have certain traditions or follow some methodologies that make them prone to generating silly or rude names. In geology there is a custom of naming a new mineral by adding the suffix “-ite” (a word derived from Greek meaning rock) to whatever the mineral is named after. But this tradition can create problems when there is no one around with their mind in the gutter. For example, when a new mineral made up of magnesium, iron, and silicon was found in the locality of Cummington in Massachusetts it was christened “Cummingtonite”, when a new mineral made up of calcium, silicon, and carbonate was discovered in a mine named “Fuka” in Japan, it was branded “Fukalite”, and a mineral made up of silicon and aluminum was named “Dickite” in honor of chemist Allan Brugh Dick who discovered it. In chemistry, when a new chemical compound is isolated from a plant, often the name of the particular chemical form of the compound is combined with the name of the genus or the species of the plant. The problem is that several plants do not have the most innocent of names, and there seem to be either a dearth of chemists or the people who vet these names with minds in the gutter. Thus “vaginatin” was isolated from the plant Selinum vaginatum, “erectone” was isolated from the plant Hypericum erectum, “clitoriacetal” was isolated from the plant Clitoria macrophylla, “nudic acid” isolated from the plant Tricholomo nudus, and so on.
I could go on, but from all these examples you get the idea. So next time someone is chastised for having their mind in the gutter, intervene and quote a few of these examples to make the case for the usefulness for such a mind in science! I have taken some of the examples listed in this post from Paul May’s amazing webpage “Molecules with Silly Names” and combined them with my own research. Mr. May has also written an eponymous book that can be bought on Amazon. Dog image by Calyponte used here under an Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The image from the copper nanotube article is a screen capture used here under the legal doctrine of Fair Use. The image of Cummingtonite by Dave Dyet is in the public domain. I published a post regarding the names taxonomists give to new organisms they discover and how these names can be flattering, witty, rude, insulting, or downright funny. As it turns out there is another crowd in the biological sciences that has been having a jolly good time naming things, and these are the scientists who study genes. And among these scientists, those who study fruit flies seems to have had the most fun. Now why on earth would someone want to study flies? To begin with, flies share about 60% of their DNA sequence with us, so many fly genes have equivalent human genes. Furthermore, flies have very short life cycles (which allows the study of several generations in a short time), they are easy and cheap to work with, and not only can fly mutants be studied to find out which genes are responsible for any alterations, but also the technology has been developed to modify, delete, or insert genes, and observe how these modifications change the anatomy, physiology, or behavior of the flies. All this has made fruit flies tremendously important in the study of human genetics. More than 100,000 research articles have been written by scientists employing these organisms as a model system, and a total of 6 Nobel prizes have been awarded to scientists who have used these insects to make key advances in several fields of science. So, not surprisingly, the fly researchers have discovered and named quite a few genes. But what do you name a gene when you discover it? More often than not, fruit fly scientists have selected gene names based on whatever the particular condition that the fly experienced upon mutation of the gene reminded them of. Let’s take a look at a few. There is a gene that when mutated in fruit flies leads to problems in the development of external genitalia in the male and female. What possible name would you have given this gene? Fruit fly scientists christened it the Ken and Barbie gene after the anatomically imprecise plastic dolls. There is a series of genes involved in the synthesis of steroid hormones in fruit flies. Mutations in these genes cause the fly embryos to develop scary-looking malformations in their exoskeleton. The names of the genes are: disembodied, phantom, shade, shadow, shroud, spook, and spookier. They are collective known as the Halloween genes. There are several genes that affect alcohol tolerance in fruit flies. One lab discovered a gene that when mutated made flies more resistant to alcohol (named Happyhour), a gene that when mutated made flies more sensitive to alcohol (named Cheapdate) and a gene which helps flies become tolerant to alcohol over time (named Hangover). Fruit flies have 8 photoreceptors in their compound eyes. Scientists discovered a gene that when mutated results in flies that lack the seventh photoreceptor in their eyes. Thus the gene was named Sevenless. Other genes that interacted with Sevenless were named in serial horror movie fashion: Bride of Sevenless (also known as BOSS), Daughter of Sevenless, and Son of Sevenless. My favorite fruit fly gene is one that when mutated doubles the fly’s lifespan. The gene was christened INDY, which is an acronym for “I’m Not Dead Yet”. This is in reference to the Bring Out Your Dead scene from the Monty Python and The Holy Grail movie. And the examples go on and on. What would you call a fly gene that when mutated results in flies with no hearts? Scientists named it, Tinman, after the character in The Wizard of Oz who did not have a heart. What would you call a fly gene that when mutated causes neurological degeneration with the production of holes in the brain? Swiss Cheese! What would you call genes that control the death of cells in flies? Grim and Reaper! But the name doesn’t have to be related to what a mutation does to the gene. For example, several fly genes code for proteins that are located in an area of the fly’s tissue cells called “the matrix”. Accordingly these genes were named Trynity, Nyobe, Morpheyus, Neyo (Neo), and Cypher after characters in the movie The Matrix. Despite the role of fruit flies in gene research, new genes have also been identified and named in other living things. For example, in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana there are two genes called Clark Kent and Superman that when mutated result in a plant with a large number of male parts (stamens) on their flowers. Interestingly, there is another gene called Kryptonite that when mutated causes the plants to lose their male parts and become sterile. A gene in the zebrafish that when mutated makes the fish extremely sensitive to light (so much so that light kills them) was christened “Dracula”. A gene in sheep that when mutated causes the animals to develop very prominent rear ends was named “Callipyge” which translates from Greek as “beautiful buttocks”. One final example is a gene in mice that codes for an enzyme that transfers a molecule of the sugar fucose to a protein. It was found that when this gene is mutated it causes the females to reject the sexual advances of the males. The name of the gene is the fucose mutarose gene, but it is better known by its acronym FucM ! Of course, as long as gene naming remained confined to insects or animals, all was fun and games. Unfortunately gene naming hit a snag. This was due on the one hand to how successful scientists were in finding counterparts of the genes of fruit flies and other animals in humans, and on the other hand to the fact that some of these genes were found to be associated with diseases. Consider for example the gene Hedgehog. When this gene is mutated in flies, it causes the fly embryos to be covered with tiny spikes. The counterpart of this gene in mammals including humans was christened Sonic Hedgehog after Sega’s video game character Sonic The Hedgehog. It turned out that a mutation in the human Sonic Hedgehog genes produces a disease called Holoprosencephaly which causes brain, skull, and facial defects. So visualize the following situation: “I’m sorry, Mr. John and Jane Doe, your child was born with cranial and facial malformations, due to a mutation in Sonic Hedgehog. He may die from the disease, or if he survives, he may experience a certain degree of mental retardation or behavior problems and seizures. What is Sonic Hedgehog? Oh, it’s a gene named after a video game character. Ha, ha, ha, funny isn’t it?” As Sonic Hedgehog and other genes became linked to deadly or life-altering human diseases, clinicians became uncomfortable with explaining the inside jokes behind these playful but sometimes rude or insensitive names to patients and their families. Because of this the Human Genome Organization Gene Nomenclature Committee consulted with many scientists and renamed several of the worst offenders. So now, for example, the committee recommends that Sonic Hedgehog be known by the acronym SHH. From all the foregoing you may derive the impression that the scientists who name these genes are foolish, but nothing could be further from the truth. These funny names represent some much needed levity in what is very hard and at times very frustrating work, and these scientists have produced key advances that have increased our knowledge of how our body works and that have also saved lives. The first drug that fights cancer by targeting the Sonic Hedgehog signaling pathway in cells, Vismodegib, was approved by the FDA in 2012. So next time you hear about the Moonwalker fly (a fly that walks backward when certain neurons are activated by genetic manipulations in a manner reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s famous dance move), or the Stargazer mouse (a mouse that rears its head upwards due to a mutation in a signaling gene), think about the many nights and weekends that the scientists that worked with these critters spent in the labs and give them a smile. Image of a fruit fly by Sanjay Acharya, used here under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). license. Image of Sonic the Hedgehog by Chris Dorward used here under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license. For the non-scientist scientific names can be vexing. Why in the world should a cat be called Felis catus? Have the scientists that coin these names (taxonomists) lost their marbles? What’s wrong with these people? Are they so bored that their idea of a good time is to spend endless hours dreaming up strange names? Why do they do that? If all of humanity spoke one language, taxonomy would be a simpler enterprise. The problem is that people speak hundreds of languages, and the ranges of the majority of organisms span several countries and even continents. Living things in different places are given different names. In fact, sometimes even among people that speak the same language an animal in one region is known by a different name in another. The problem is that we need to identify with accuracy organisms that are pests, or transmit disease, or produce some chemical that may be useful in medicine. Because of this need, scientists agreed on one system of classification that everyone could use regardless of their country, language, or culture. Living things are commonly referred to by the genus to which they belong followed by their species (a type of name and surname if you will), which is known as the binomial classification. These names are often (but not always) written in Latin or Greek words or Latinized words. The reason for this is mostly historical. During the beginnings of taxonomy (the science of classifying living things), Latin was the language of science and initial classifications employed Latin or Greek words. Eventually, even as the influence of Latin in science waned, because so many living things had already been classified and given Latin or Greek names, the system was retained. The majority of scientific names are made up of the Latin or Greek name of the organism and make allusions to some of its characteristics. So the cat is named Felis catus, which means cunning cat, the southern flying squirrel is named Glaucomys volans which means grey flying mouse, the mallard duck is called Anas platyrhynchos, which mean broad-snouted duck, the European polecat is named Mustela putorius which means foul-smelling weasel, and so on. Taxonomists name these organisms and then proceed to define certain characteristics that make the organism unique so they can be identified. By this metric you’d think that taxonomists have a pretty dull job. However, the actual scientific names are merely used to identify the entity. They don’t have to be logical or in any way related to a characteristic of the living thing. In fact they can be downright funny. A scientist from the Smithsonian Institution, Terry Erwin, decided to have some fun when naming new species of beetles belonging to the genus Agra. As a result of this we have Agra cadabra, Agra phobia, Agra vate, and Agra vation among others. The entomologist Gordon Marsh christened two new species of wasps Heerz lukenatcha (Here’s looking at you) and Heerz tooya (Here’s to you). Entomologist Neal Evenhuis labelled several new species of flies Pieza kake, Pieza pie, Pieza rhea, and Pieza deresistans (i.e. piece of cake, piece of pie, etc.). And there is even toilet humor! Entomologist Melville Hatch decided to name new species of round fungus beetles Colon forceps, Colon grossum, Colon horni, Colon monstrosum, and Colon rectum (do note that here “Colon” is derived from the Greek word “Kolon” meaning limb or joint). A few scientific names are intentionally rude such as that coined by scientist, James Pakaluk, who seemed to be in a particularly spiteful mood when he named a beetle Foadia Pakaluk (FOAD is an acronym for F*** Off And Die), or that created by entomologist, Arnold Menke, who gave a new species of wasp the name Pison eu (hint: say it out loud). However, in many cases the scientific name sounds rude only as a result of misreading the original Latin or Greek names. An African species of wattled crane is called Bugeranus carunculatus. In English the genus of the bird sound like an elementary school insult until you realize that it is made up of the fusion of the Greek word bous, which means “ox”, and geranus, which means “crane” (hence ox-crane). The Tibetan blackbird is called Turdus maximus, but any possible scatological interpretation of this name vanishes when we understand that turdus is the Latin word for the bird we call thrush. However, Aploparaksis turdi, a tapeworm, does include in the species name a reference to the material where this living thing can be found. There are many motivations behind scientific names. In 1904 the English entomologist, George Kirkaldy, decided he would immortalize some of his romantic conquests as taxonomical names when classifying several new species of the so-called true bugs (hemiptera). So he created several new genuses: Dolichisme, Florichisme, Marichisme, Nanichisme, Peggichisme, and Polychisme (i.e. Dolly kiss me, Flori kiss me, etc.) followed by the species name “kirkaldy”. For this levity, Kirkaldy, was criticized as frivolous by the London Zoological Society, but his bug names nevertheless were retained. In 2002 Neal Evenhuis (of Pieza kake fame, see above) decided to take up this tradition by naming a fossil fly Carmenelectra shechisme in reference to the actress Carmen Electra (although he did not know her personally). A less often seem theme in scientific names is insults levied against a person. For example, the seed bug Aphanus rolandri was named by the father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, after a greedy student named Daniel Rolander who refused to show Linnaeus the specimens he collected. Aphanus means ignoble or obscure. Two Swedish paleontologists, Elsa Warburg and Orvar Isberg, despised each other so much that they traded insults by naming new species. Warburg gave a trilobite the name Isbergia planifrons (planiforms means “flat forehead” which is akin to “stupid” in Swedish) and Isberg named a species of mussel Warburgia crassa (crassa meaning fat). A prehistoric hoofed-mammal that was thought to be a type of pig was named Dinohyus hollandi by paleontologist O. A. Peterson after his boss the Carnegie Museum director W.J. Holland. Holland was greatly disliked because he insisted that his name be included in every publication even if he had not contributed to it. The name of the animal means “Holland’s Terrible Pig”, which of course can be read as “Holland is a terrible pig”! However, most of the time having a new species named after you is considered an honor. For example, former US president George Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had new species of slime-mold beetles of the genus Agathidium named after them by entomologists who wanted to thank them for their service. These were A. bushi, A. cheneyi, and A. rumsfeldi, respectively. The creator of the cartoon The Far Side, Gary Larson, had a new species of feather louse (Strigiphilus garylarsoni) named after him for his contributions to inserting science into the public consciousness. Nevertheless, sometimes this honor may not be for the most exalted of reasons. A species of horse fly with a prominent rear end was named Scaptia beyonceae after the voluptuous singer/songwriter Beyoncé. But you don’t even have to exist to have a species named after you! Consider a species of mushroom named Spongiforma squarepantsii after the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants, a fossil trilobite named Han Solo after the Star Wars character, or a cave arthropod named Gollumjapyx smeagol after the character Gollum/Smeagol from The Lord of the Rings. Recently 7 new spider species were named after fictional spiders in literature ranging from Harry Potter to Charlotte’s Web. The shortest scientific names are those of a South Asian bat, Ia io, and a Chinese dinosaur, Yi qi. The longest scientific name belongs to the Southeast Asian soldier fly, Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides, which means “near soldier wasp-fly, wasp fly-like". Go figure. An even longer name, which was proposed for a crustacean from Lake Baikal, Gammaracanthuskytodermogammarus loricatobaicalensis, was thankfully invalidated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature! Sometimes scientific names create uncomfortable situations. In 1878 in the jungles of Sumatra Florentine naturalist Odoardo Beccari discovered the plant with the largest unbranched flower in the world. The central structure of the flower called the spadix can grow to a height of 12 feet and is one of the reasons Beccari named it Amorphophallus titanum. Little did he know that the seeds of this plant would make their way to botanical gardens all over the world where they would become sensations every time they bloom, not only because of their size, but because the flower emits a putrid smell akin to a rotting corpse meant to attract flies and carrion beetles, which are their pollinators. As a result of this, the flowerings of A.Titanum specimens attract large crowds including families with children. This has created a “nomenclature problem”. What name do you call this plant? Do you really want to use the scientific name only to have to deal with a little child raising their hand and asking, “What is an “amorfofalus”? To avoid this, the naturalist Sir David Attenborough (who incidentally has a large number of creatures named after him) coined the term “Titan Arum”, which is now often used to describe the plant in public. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The field of taxonomy has a rich history replete with anecdotes, inside jokes, and witty and flamboyant personalities. The work of taxonomists is important, and despite their obsession with research and the classification of living things, many of these individuals who spend countless hours in the field and the lab are having a good time. Remember this next time you read that a fossil amphibian was named Eucritta melanolimnetes (Creature from the Black Lagoon), that a bacterium that survived exposure to outer space was named Halorubrum chaoviator (traveler of the void), or that a squid-like creature was named Vampyroteuthis infernalis (vampire squid from hell)! Do you have a favorite scientific name? Write a comment and let me know. Cat picture by Tiki toko used under a creative commons attribution-share alike 4.0 international license. Picture of a wattled crane at Dallas Zoo by kusanagi seed used under a creative commons attribution-share alike 2.0 generic license. Picture of Dinohyus hollandi is from the University of Nebraska State Museum. Photo of Scaptia beyonceae by Erick used under a creative commons attribution-share alike 3.0 unported license. Photo of Titan Arum by Lothar Grünz is in the public domain. |
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