In our first session we discussed the Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and were not sure about the correct origin/translation of 'Toll'. Below is an excerpt of an article describing the name-giving event and I will give my own interpretation of the sentence exclaimed by Nuesslein-Volhard following the excerpt.
Hansson GK, Edfeldt K.
Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2005 Jun;25(6):1085-7. No abstract available.
PMID: 15923538 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Toll to be paid at the gateway to the vessel wall.
"[...] Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard of the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen
analyzed mutations in fruit flies. In 1985, she saw a weird-looking fly
larva in which the ventral portion of the body was underdeveloped. Her
spontaneous comment was "Das war ja toll!" meaning "That was weird!" and she
coined the name Toll for the mutated gene. The protein product of the Toll
gene was found to cause ventralization, and normal functional activity of
Toll is necessary for dorsoventral polarity in the fly. The discovery of
Toll was one in a series of discoveries of genes controlling early
embryogenesis, which led to a Nobel prize for Nüsslein-Volhard in
1995.[...]"
'Toll' in old German means 'crazy', but 'toll' changed the meaning over time and today it is used similar to the English 'great', 'awesome' or 'cool'. I am sure that Nuesslein-Volhard, being a modern woman of the 1980's, exclaimed "That was [is?] awesome!" because she knew that this discovery would greatly enhance her career :-).
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