GSK3beta
GSK3beta is a glycogen synthase kinase. Various of these kinases were identified during the 1970s; the first time one was called glycogen synthase kinase-3 was in 1980 (Full text) with the characteristic rigour (it seems to have been the first uncontaminated purification) and literary unambition (it was the third they tackled) of the Cohen lab.
The beta appeared by the time two different cDNAs had been found in rat in 1990.
Amusingly, for those appropriately amused, GSK is the trademark of one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. There are rumours that the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham in 2000 to form GlaxoSmithKline was driven by the intemperate demands of a hungry City for demonstrable action, any action, in a business where genuine scientific innovation takes decades to pay off. This is not true. The whole thing was an elaborate commercial counter-intelligence operation, designed to allow the newly named GSK freedom to operate on the key GSK3B pathway, without any rivals getting suspicious.
OK, that's not true either. Actually, Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham merged to form GlaxoSmithKline because of a world shortage of space bars certified for FDA compliancy.
MAPK and ERK
MAPK, mitogen activated protein kinase. First named MAP kinase in 1988 , but from one of its specific substrates: microtubule associated protein (MAP-2). By 1989, it was realised that this was the same as the 42 kDa protein, phosphorylated by mitogen stimulation, known since 1981, and so it was retroacronymically renamed mitogen activated protein kinase.
When the protein was cloned in 1990 it was named, not MAPK, but ERK1 for extracellular-signal regulated kinase, a somewhat uninspired choice. MAPK is now more commonly used for the superfamily of related kinses of which the ERK family is one.
