Summary of Science,
July 2008.
You can find all the Science summaries in web format at:
http://www.brainischemia.net
Unlike the JCBFM journal club, ONLY RELEVANT ARTICLES are listed. My relevance assessment is entirely implicit and is designated with regard to work we are doing or contemplating RIGHT NOW.
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*1. Drug Target Identification Using Side-Effect Similarity. Monica Campillos, et all.
Sullysummary: The authors describe a hihgly novel and ingenious approach for screening drugs for potential targets: by looking at their side-effect profiles. They looked at 746 marketed drugs to generate a "network" of 1018 side effect–driven drug-drug relation, 261 of which were formed by chemically dissimilar drugs. They ended up desting 20 0f these relations, 13 of which performed well in drug-target in vitro assays.
Relevance: L0W.
Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5886/263.pdf
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*2. When Death Strikes Without Warning. Jennifer Couzin.
Sullysummary: Despite the purple title, an interesting read about the increased recognition and interest in the phenomenon of sudden death during epilepsy, or SUDEP.
Relevance: LOW.
Link (PDF):http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5885/31.pdf
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*3. Painful Publishing. Martin Raff, et al.
Sullysummary: Read this, and take some comfort in that (1) we are not alone and (2), things may change. Here's a sample:
Sadly, career
advancement can depend more on where you publish than what you publish.
Consequently, authors are so keen to publish in these select journals that they
are willing to carry out extra, time-consuming experiments suggested by
referees, even when the results could strengthen the conclusions only
marginally. All too often, young scientists spend many months doing such
“referees’experiments.” Their time and effort would frequently be better spent
trying to move their project forward rather than sideways. There is also an
inherent danger in doing experiments to obtain results that a referee demands
to see. Although we emphasize these problems with regard to the highest-impact
journals, the same problems occur with other journals.
The authors don't just diagnose the problem, they also offer a prescription. Check it out, and let's hope people listen.
Relevance: MED
Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5885/36a.pdf
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*4. Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship. James A. Evans, et al.
Sullysummary: A look at the impact of electronic publishing on scientists and science. Hint: it ain't all good.
Relevance: LOW
Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5887/395.pdf
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*5. Title/author. ERdj5 Is Required as a Disulfide Reductase for
Degradation of Misfolded Proteins in the ER. Ryo Ushioda, et al.
Sullysummary: A small fraction of newly translated proteins are misfolded early in their lives, and some of these form aggregates in the ER. These proteins must be retrotranslocated out of the ER to the cytoplasm, where they are degraded by the ubiquitin-proteasome system (in the process called ERAD, or ER-associated degradation). For this to occur, the aggregates must be disaggregated, and that means (among other things) reducing disulfide bonds. Here, the authors report that this reaction is catalyzed by--and requires--ERdj5, the first dedicated reductase identified in the ER. This is a story with high potential relevance to our examination of ER dysfunction. Rita is on the case!
Relevance: MED-HIGH
Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5888/569.pdf
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END SUMMARY.