Tuesday 30 April 2013

Communication Breakdown

A friend of mine is giving a departmental talk this week. An email was sent announcing their talk which had the title;

"Splicing factor, histone modification enzyme, and transcription factor that are required for transposon silencing in Drosophila goatees"

This was pretty exciting as I've never noticed that flies have goatees but perhaps this was an amazing mutation or the result of a splicing factor, histone modification enzyme and transcription factor working in conjunction to create a goatee?
Maybe it would look something like this?



Or this?


Sadly, my musings were cut short when my friend revealed the truth behind the Drosophila goatee.

"I mistyped "gonates" instead of "gonads". The secretary thought that I meant "goatee"… So they kindly corrected the title of my talk"

This is still a funny turn of events but nowhere near as cool as if the original title had been true. Sadly, there isn't a goatee gene or mutant  in Drosophila as far as I can tell. If anyone ever finds a new hairy face mutation they should definitely call it "goatee" though.

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