Talk:Short linear motif

Hunt quote

The Tim Hunt quote is cited to a Trends in Biochemical Sciences 1990 column (doi:10.1016/0968-0004(90)90019-8). On ScienceDirect (search results page), it seems the article is authored by Dice, titled "Peptide sequences that target cytosolic proteins for lysosomal proteolysis", and does not contain the quote text.

Does anyone know what the story is behind this quote and what the proper reference is? Eigma (talk) 02:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Eigma,

Thanks for you contributions to this page! The Hunt quote appeared unreferenced, so I decided to fix that. I found that this paper describing the ELM resource (PMID: 19920119) contained the quote with a citation. So I simply took their citation without tracking it back to the journal as carefully as you. I expect that the quote is correct, but it will take a bit more digging to find the correct citation. Thanks for pointing this out! Alexbateman (talk) 07:09, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! I came to this page looking for a definition of short linear motifs, so when I found a cited quote I had to try to follow the reference. The only thing I can imagine is perhaps the quote is in some side column which is not included in the online version of the journal. I will see if my school has a paper copy of the journal issue and flip through it. Eigma (talk) 15:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm it does appear in the paper version of the journal - it was part of a column in the intro material. Doopa

Update: No paper copy. On Google Scholar, the only hit for "The sequences of many proteins contain short" other than ELM is a book by Rosenberg which has wording quite similar to the quote:

Hunt quote

Rosenberg "Protein Analysis and Purification" 2nd ed 2004

"The sequences of many proteins contain short, conserved motifs that are involved in recognition and targeting activities, often separate from other functional properties of the molecule in which they occur. These motifs are linear, in the sense that three-dimensional organization is not required to bring distant segments of the molecule together to make the recognizable unit. The conservation of these motifs varies: some are highly conserved while others, for example, allow substitutions that retain only a certain pattern of charge across the motif."

"The sequences of many proteins contain short, conserved motifs that are involved in recognition and targeting. These sequences are often separate from other functional properties of the molecule in which they are found. These motifs appear in the primary, linear structure of the protein. It does not include elements from different polypeptide chains or from widely scattered portions of a single polypeptide chain. Therefore, they are not the result of distant segments being brought together as the protein assumes its native conformation. The conservation of these motifs varies: some are highly conserved while others permit substitutions that retain only a certain pattern or charge across the motif."

Eigma (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I was also confused by this and so I got the PDF of the cited article from Science Direct. The quote is taken from a editorial box but there is no indication of the author. Indeed, it ends: "We are indebted to Tim Hunt, who first suggested this series..." - therefore I think it is unlikely that Hunt was the author. I am not sure who was the editor of TIBS in 1990, so it is possible that the Rosenberg quote by Eigma is self-plagiarism. Either way, I think this quote needs to be reattributed. (I am also somewhat doubtful that this really was the first definition of a linear motif as they were clearly already being studied and recognised - this is not a proposal for such recognition.)

Cabbagesofdoom (talk) 03:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)