Download Omission of citing prior work

Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 292: G1813, 2007;
doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00161.2007.
Letters To The Editor
Omission of citing prior work
Angela de Souza Otero and Gabor Szabo
Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, Virginia
TO THE EDITOR:
http://www.ajpgi.org
able online since July 13, 2004. More importantly, if one types
the key words “isolation/primary/cilium” in Entrez-PubMed,
Mitchell et al. is the third article listed. Therefore, it is difficult
to understand how Huang et al. were unable to locate and cite
peer-reviewed work that is highly relevant to their research
subject.
Our chief concern is for the effect of this omission on
Kimberly P. Mitchell, a young Ph.D. candidate at our department, who has done most of the work, experimental and
intellectual, in our article. Kimberly has already two publications and shows great potential as a future researcher and
teacher in physiology. However, we fear for her future enthusiasm for an academic career, given that her work does not
receive the acknowledgement it fully deserves.
We sincerely hope that you can correct this oversight.
REFERENCES
1. Huang BQ, Masyuk TV, Muff MA, Tietz PS, Masyuk AI, LaRusso NF.
Isolation and characterization of cholangiocyte primary cilia. Am J Physiol
Gastrointest Liver Physiol 291: G500 –G509, 2006.
2. Mitchell KA, Gallagher BC, Szabo G, Otero A de S. NDP kinase moves
into developing primary cilia. Cell Motil Cytoskeleton 59: 62–73, 2004.
0193-1857/07 $8.00 Copyright © 2007 the American Physiological Society
G1813
Downloaded from http://ajpgi.physiology.org/ by 10.220.33.2 on October 21, 2016
We write you regarding an article named
“Isolation and characterization of cholangiocyte primary cilia,”
published by Huang et al. in September of 2006 (1).
The Introduction of this article ends with the following
sentences: “Despite these findings, our understanding of the
functions of the primary cilium and its role in responding to
environmental stimuli are still poorly understood. Thus a
detailed characterization of ciliary morphology under normal
and pathological conditions, the development of approaches
for the isolation of primary cilia, and an identification of
ciliary-specific proteins are essential steps to further study the
functions of these organelles. In the present study, we provide
a detailed multidimensional morphological description of
cholangiocyte cilia and describe two novel approaches to
isolate enriched ciliary fractions from cultured cholangiocytes.”
We were deeply disturbed when we read this article and
found that Huang et al. failed to refer to published work from
our laboratories. Namely, in Mitchell et al. (2) we reported the
first protocol for the isolation, as well as the characterization by
biochemical methods and electron microscopy, of primary cilia
from kidney cells. Our work was published and widely avail-