Both Medea and Mothers against dpp were identified in a genetic screen for maternal effect mutations that caused lethality of heterozygous decapentaplegic progeny.
[1] Because decapentaplegic is a bone morphogenetic protein in the transforming growth factor beta superfamily, identification of the fly Smad genes provided a much-needed clue to understand the signal transduction pathway for this diverse family of extracellular proteins.
Humans, mice, and other vertebrates have a gene with the same function as Medea, called SMAD4.
[3] Another laboratory used Medea as an acronym to describe a synthetic gene causing maternal effect dominant embryonic arrest.
The formal genetic designation for maternal effect dominant embryonic arrest is P{Medea.myd88}; more details are in FlyBase.