Talk:Two phenylalanines in an acidic track

Many people use this term wrongly - they have mis-read or mis-heard the final word in this phrase as "track" when it is "tract". It is possible that the word "tract" is more obscure and harder to grasp, but this is the correct term.

This mistake is not a spelling mistake, though it can be seen as that at first glance (by me too!). Deeper thinking about this shows that this is a linguistic error, which has become common place (see example, and needs disambiguation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timlev37 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you have a source to back your claims that (a) the papers you're citing are making a mistake, and (b) that the mistake is serious enough to deserve a Wikipedia article? Otherwise, I suggest this article be demoted to a footnote in FFAT motif. Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 22:21, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Reply by Tim Levine:

I personally coined the term FFAT in 2003, and defined it in a paper in EMBO Journal as "Two phenylalanines in an acidic tract" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12727870). This precise phrase was used by most other workers in the field, and has 176 hits in Google Scholar, starting from 2004 onwards. The erroneous phrase ("Two phenylalanines in an acidic track") has been used much fewer times, with 6 hits in Google Scholar. The 6 hits map onto 3 papers, one thesis and one patent, all after 2009, as listed below.

The problem is that these papers are not just easily dismissed. New entrants to the field will use some of these papers as major sources of material, especially paper #2, which is written by highly eminent people and published in the world's highest impact cell biology journal.

My aim is that people searching with the wrong expansion are informed of the error and then pointed to the correct expansion. Can this be achieved in a footnote?

Google Scholar output for "Two phenylalanines in an acidic track" (year range 2002-2015) obtained on August 17, 2015: 1. OSBP-related protein 2 is a sterol receptor on lipid droplets that regulates the metabolism of neutral lipids R Hynynen, M Suchanek, J Spandl, N Bäck, C Thiele and VM Olkkonen - Journal of lipid …, 2009 - ASBMB ... A motif called FFAT (two phenylalanines in an acidic track), which mediates the binding to the ER resident protein VAP-A (for vesicle-associated membrane protein-associated protein), specifies association of several ORPs with the ER membranes (22). ... Cited by 48

2. A four-step cycle driven by PI (4) P hydrolysis directs sterol/PI (4) P exchange by the ER-Golgi tether OSBP B Mesmin, J Bigay, JM von Filseck, S Lacas-Gervais, G Drin and B Antonny - Cell, 2013 - Elsevier ... OSBP, FAPP2, and CERT share a similar domain organization consisting of an N-terminal pleckstrin homology (PH) domain, a central FFAT motif (two phenylalanines in an acidic track), and a C-terminal lipid transport domain (Lev, 2010 and Levine, 2004). ... Cited by 70

3. Rhinovirus uses a phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate/cholesterol counter-current for the formation of replication compartments at the ER-Golgi interface PS Roulin, M Lötzerich, F Torta, LB Tanner, FJ van Kuppeveld, MR Wenk and UF Greber - Cell host & …, 2014 - Elsevier Similar to other positive-strand RNA viruses, rhinovirus, the causative agent of the common cold, replicates on a web of cytoplasmic membranes, orchestrated by. Cited by 12

4. The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 8 Mutant VAPB-P56S Causes a Nuclear Envelope and Nuclear Pore Defect A Chalhoub - 2012 - ruor.uottawa.ca Page 1. THE AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS 8 MUTANT VAPB-P56S CAUSES A NUCLEAR ENVELOPE AND NUCLEAR PORE DEFECT Antonious Chalhoub Thesis

5. Goodpasture antigen binding protein and its detection J Saus, F Revert - US Patent 7,935,492, 2011 - Google Patents The present invention provides native Goodpasture antigen binding protein isoforms, monoclonal antibodies directed against such proteins, and methods for their use. Cited by 1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timlev37 (talk • contribs) 10:19, 17 August 2015 (UTC)