Pokemon Mania Gets Real: Protein Named after Pikachu

The quote "Everybody loves Pokemon" gets a whole new meaning starting today, since the fantasy world of the anime/games series was finally turned into something as real as possible and not because of a fanboy's tattoo. No, things are very serious: a team of Japanese researchers (from Osaka Bioscience Institute in Suita, Osaka Prefecture), has identified a new protein that is necessary to efficiently transmit visual information to the brain and decided to name it Pikachurin, after the popular character in the Pokemon series.

They do have an explanation for that (except for fanboyism, which was not stated anywhere): the protein plays a role in determining the efficiency of kinetic vision, by transmitting signals from visual cells to the brain. Since this process is lighting-fast, the researchers have decided to use Pikachu's name as inspiration and forever write it in history books. It's a strange world we live in, let me tell you that!

But before you start laughing and ask your Diamond pokemons how something like that was possible, you should know that this Pikachurin is expected to be helpful in the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa and it was apparently found while the researches, led by Takahisa Furukawa, were analyzing some mice genes.

Now, all we can do is wait for another team of scientists or researchers to discover jump'n'joy proteins which shall be called Mariourin (although I can already imagine the hilarious effect of an "e" placed at the end of the word). If Mariourin is not discovered, we're surely going to get in the near future a Masterchiefin, or a Solidsnakeism or, why not, a medical syndrome named Dukenukism. Anyway, one thing is sure: tens of thousands of years into the future, people will ask the question "Who was first: Pikachu or Pikachurin?".

Oh, yes, and one more thing that bugs me: why did they name the lighting-fast protein after Pikachu and not Sonic? Or Flash. What do you think about that?