A new paper in PLoS Biology by Claudio Stern and colleagues reports that two proteins bind together to help determine the timing of the development of different parts of the vertebrate embryo.

Their names? BERT and ERNI…

While the research itself is interesting, we’re amazed that the press release from Stern’s university managed not to mention the connection to one of the world’s most successful children’s TV programmes – a connection which, to some extent, reflects the proteins’ functions “Our work shows that the proteins BERT and ERNI have an antagonistic relationship: BERT is stronger and overrides ERNI’s suppression of the Sox2 gene, which has a crucial function in setting up the nervous system,” says Stern.

(Hat tip: Stranger Fruit)