One of the joys of fly genetics is the tradition of whimsical naming by generations of imaginative Drosophila researchers who have come up with such gems as Tinman, which affects the fly heart, and the world famous Hedgehog family, which affects development in everything eukaryotic. Another fine example of creative genetic nomenclature is Nervous Wreck (Nwk), the protein produced by the nwk gene, which was shown in 2004 to regulate synaptic growth, with mutant nwk wrecking the assembly of presynaptic terminals in Drosophila neurons. In new research, ASCB member Avital Rodal and colleagues at Brandeis University and Tatiana Stamishneva-Konovalova at Moscow State University, reveal that Nwk is part of a dual autoinhibitory mechanism in fruit fly neurons that controls membrane remodeling with its F-BAR domain as well as actin cytoskeleton assembly with its SH3 (SRC homology 3) domains. Using single-particle electron microscopy, the researchers were able to study the interaction of Nwk with its F-BAR domain that remodels lipid bilayer membranes but were surprised to see that it also affected its SH3 domains that inhibit actin filament assembly in the cytoskeleton by Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein (WASp) through the actin related protein (Arp) 2/3 complex. The researchers report that uncoupling the two linked mechanisms led to runaway growth in neuronal synapses.