Coping with complexity (in macromolecular interactions)—a comment on Rebecca L. Rich's and David G. Myszka's “Grading the commercial optical biosensor literature—Class of 2008: ‘The Mighty Binders”’
✍ Scribed by Thomas Vorup-Jensen
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 109 KB
- Volume
- 23
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0952-3499
- DOI
- 10.1002/jmr.1046
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Recently The Journal of Molecular Recognition featured a review of the optical biosensor literature published in 2008 written by Rebecca L. Rich and David G. Myszka, both at the University of Utah. The current review follows a series of several similar undertakings. With these efforts Rich and Myszka have literally evaluated thousands of papers with a keen eye for the strengths and shortcomings of experimental work with, in particular, biosensors based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Certainly I, and probably many others, have had a sobering experience from reading these papers, and I find (and still find) many of the suggestions made here valuable, if not always implementable in reports on our own work. What we learned from this latest reading is, however, another matter. According to Rich's and Myszka's series of reviews it would appear that not much progress was made in the way researchers design, execute, and report their experiments with SPR sensors. In short, if you share the views of Rich and Myszka, it must be a bore to read through all of these papers looking for excellence. Perhaps this explains a striking development with their writing style.