Corny Review Titles : Transcription and Translation

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Alex Palazzo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at The University of Toronto.

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Corny Review Titles

Category: Lab Life
Posted on: November 3, 2008 5:21 PM, by Alex Palazzo

C'mon you've all seen them. Here's one I just spotted in the most recent issue of Molecular Cell:

Methed-Up FOXOs Can't In-Akt-ivate

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Comments

I love these things.

Block, SM. "Fifty ways to love your lever: myosin motors." Cell 87:151-157 (1996).

Posted by: James F | November 3, 2008 5:48 PM

Tried submitting this last night but it didn't go through; I'll try it again today without the direct links. Alex, if you're just behind on moderation and this is a duplicate, feel free to delete it.

Two of my personal all-time favorite review titles:

* A perfect vulva every time: gradients and signaling cascades in C. elegans. (C. Kenyon)
* The murmur of old broken heartstrings (J. Tower).

Review titles are a great opportunity for creativity; I think there should be a contest, including a category for great titles without any data to support them. I thought of one recently (curiously, also relating to fork head transcription factors):

"FOXO knows many things, but sonic hedgehog knows one big thing"

:-)

Posted by: CP | November 4, 2008 12:54 PM

CP,

Yeah once you start adding URLs the Sciborg spam filter goes haywire. Cynthia has some vulva authoring a title like that!

Posted by: Alex Palazzo | November 4, 2008 5:43 PM

Till disassembly do us part: a happy marriage of nuclear envelope and chromatin.
Tsuchiya Y
Biochem J (2008) 143(2):155-61

Posted by: Acme Scientist | November 4, 2008 6:19 PM

My own personal favorite (and one I gave my boss) is "Can you adhere me now? Good." on yeast adherence proteins.

Posted by: matt | November 4, 2008 7:49 PM

I hate those. They are so kitsch.

It's like a joke repeated 1000 times. When it was new and original - OK. But that was couple decades ago. Now, seeing as everyone around me TRYING HARD to come with these for the reviews and talk titles - that's just stupid and not amusing anymore. Titles, just like the rest of the scientific papers, should carry *information*. The stuff like
"The murmur of old broken heartstrings" carries absolutely none of it.

I recently attended a talk that had a protein name in the title. Well, the lecture did not *mention* the protein! It was there because it made for a cute title that referenced relatively recent movie. IMHO, that's just retarded.

Posted by: DK | November 16, 2008 8:14 PM