Scientists Despina Moshous and the Artemis Protein

In this last post for the week to focus on great moments in immunology, I feature a rare time when biologists actually got their naming system right.

Featured here is an Ancient Roman copy of a Greek statue featuring Artemis. Although usually known as the Goddess of the Hunt and wilderness, the moon, and female chastity, Artemis also protected young girls and mothers giving birth.

So back to biology. In the early 2000s, the scientist Despina Moshous and his team discovered a protein that, if incorrectly made, caused children to become very ill. This protein is responsible for some of the important construction of antibodies in our immune systems: without them, we would not be able to learn how to recognize harmful pathogens — the main function of the adaptive immune system. So Moshous and his crew decided to call this protein Artemis because it helps proctect children (and grown children) from sickness.

Biologists really are terrible at naming stuff, so Artemis is a welcome change. An example of the usual way they do things shows up in the name of the gene that codes for Artemis — it is DCLRE 1C (for “DNA cross-link repair 1C gene”). Their names sort of make sense if they had come from someone who stayed up all night drinking coffee and then went on a bender, but they really ought to hire humanities majors for their nomenclature.