Daily Meh is an edited stream of consciousness, by Simen.

“We had particular problems with fruit-fly researchers,” says Sue Povey of University College London, who chaired the committee approving names for human genes from 1996 to 2007. “They were always giving their genes names like hedgehog.”

As memorable as such names are, they can prove problematical too. Take the mammalian gene Sonic hedgehog, which acquired its name from the related fruit-fly gene. It is now known to play a role in a developmental disorder of the brain known as holoprosencephaly. The name does not help when parents have to be told that a mutation in Sonic hedgehog has given rise to their baby’s potentially fatal condition.