HA I found this incredibly funny.
So I was poking around on Wikipedia to do some background reading for Medsci203 (freaking love this paper!), and I looked up Toll-like receptors. Toll-like receptors are a class of protein that help out in the innate immune system that bind to foreign molecules, to activate responses when it's needed.
Anyway, Toll-like receptors have a wishy washy name (imagine if someone was called Mary-like or Sophie-like, or Loubie-loo-like) because they are really similar to what's coded by the Toll gene, which is found in Drosophila (flies).
And the Toll gene was called the Toll gene, because when the scientists were mucking about with this gene, the larvae that were made with the whacked gene looked really weird.
And when the scientists found this out they were so excited they started shouting in German. Alright, they probably spoke German in the first place but they started shouting all the same - "Das ist ja toll!" - which means "That's just great!"
And that is why, as is implied on Wikipedia, the Toll gene is called the Toll gene. So really it's called the Great gene, because it's just great. And fly-babies look strange when it's mutated.
Here's the link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_%28gene%29
Now I couldn't find any pictures with weird looking fly babies (which probably all look like rice anyway), so instead of that, here is a picture of a fly with legs on its face where its antennae should be (the one on the right).
Edit** - this picture is totally-like unrelated to Toll-like receptors, I just thought it was cool. :D
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