deodands

Ras and Raf

Ras was named by a committee in 1981, from rat sarcoma virus.

Now Ras is one of the activators of a protein called Raf. I originally thought Raf would be be named from Ras factor or something similar, but first I discovered there was a gene called Raf from 'regulation of alpha-fetoprotein' in 1977. Or was it a microbial gene for the ability to use the trisaccharide raffinose? But it was neither of these. Raf seems to get its name in a 1983 paper which gives no direct statement of derivation. It was isolated from 3611 murine sarcoma virus which transforms fibroblasts, so we might guess at 'rat fibroblast'. This was before there was any knowledge of Ras:Raf interactions so it's just the not-quite-coincidence that they both came from rat viruses.

Raf itself is a family of proteins. In a rather pleasing blow against hyper consistent nomenclature, the usual three are called A-Raf, named in 1986 'in recognition of its relatedness to the raf oncogene', B-Raf, named two years later 'because it is related to but distinct from c-raf and A-raf', and ... Raf-1. Raf-1, probably because the viral oncogene v-raf had two human homologues, c-raf-1 and a pseudogene c-raf-2. So when the time came for naming isoforms of Raf, presumably the one in Raf-1 was already passing as a modifier.