How to sort row index case-insensitive way in Pandas DataFrame

Question

I have the following data:

Set Coolthing Route Organ Up Down
set4 Pam3CSK4 ID LL 81 60
set4 Poly_IC ID LL 542 92
set4 Poly_IC ID MM 73 73
set4 cdiGMP ID MM 143 78
set4 Poly_IC ID BB 32 82
set4 cdiGMP ID BB 90 129

With the following code:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.io.parsers.read_table("http://dpaste.com/2PHS7R0.txt",sep=" ")
df = df.pivot(index="Coolthing",columns="Organ").fillna(0)
df.drop('Set',axis=1,inplace=True)
df.drop('Route',axis=1,inplace=True)
df.index.name = None
df.columns.names = (None,None)

I get the following:

In [75]: df
Out[75]:
          Up            Down
          BB   LL   MM    BB  LL  MM
Pam3CSK4   0   81    0     0  60   0
Poly_IC   32  542   73    82  92  73
cdiGMP    90    0  143   129   0  78

What I want to do is to sort the row with case insensitive way yielding this:

          Up            Down
          BB   LL   MM    BB  LL  MM
cdiGMP    90    0  143   129   0  78
Pam3CSK4   0   81    0     0  60   0
Poly_IC   32  542   73    82  92  73

How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

Building on @Marius case_insensitive_order, a single liner using reindex

In [63]: df.reindex(sorted(df.index, key=lambda x: x.lower()))
Out[63]:
          Up            Down
          BB   LL   MM    BB  LL  MM
cdiGMP    90    0  143   129   0  78
Pam3CSK4   0   81    0     0  60   0
Poly_IC   32  542   73    82  92  73