 Both indy proteins are sodium sulfate symporters.Its name originates from a well-known comic line in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".In a Yale University School of Medicine study by lead author and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Gerald I. Shulman, the George R. Cowgill Professor of Physiological Chemistry, Medicine, and Cellular and Molecular Biology, reduced expression of this gene in "Drosophila melanogaster" flies and "C. elegans" worms () modeled the effects on obesity and diabetes of caloric reduction in primates such as humans.