I took the opportunity to talk to most of the people who are/have worked on caki/cmg/CASK at the recent Neurofly meeting in Manchester. Importantly, this included Jean-Rene Martin the first author on the original caki cloning paper. We are all in agreement that this gene is best curated as "CASK" since this is the name used by mammalian researchers and it will allow them to access the literature on the fly gene. This will also hopefully help our research be more immediately and obviously relevant to those outside the fly community who might not know of the connection to the vertebrate gene.
I guess the full name that is analogous to the mammalian name <up>calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine protein kinase</up> is OK, but it is really a misnomer - this protein has virtually no kinase activity and does not bind Ca2+/CaM.
Thanks, Leslie
Leslie C. Griffith, MD PhD
Dept. of Biology, MS008
Brandeis University