On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 15:32:14 +0000, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote
(in message <v03007801b45720b716d5@[193.50.234.80]>):
> David Chipman claimed that "it is very clear and very obvious what is meant
> by "a key
> metabolite in [the nonmevalonate] pathway".
>> I intended to comment on this contribution when it appeared, especially the
> last paragraph ("I don't think it is wise for one school of theoreticians
> to lay absolute claim to the legitimate use of terms [e.g., 'key'] that
> they didn't invent..."), but as Pedro did that very effectively already
> there didn't seem much point.
>> However, I was reminded of Douglas's original point when the latest issue
> of Eur. J. Biochem. appeared (vol. 266, number 1, Nov. 1999), as it
> contains a review (pp. 1-16) whose authors like the phrase "key
> intermediate" so much that they use it not only in the title but also in
> the first sentence of the abstract and in the first caption of the
> introduction. However, try as I might I cannot see that they are using in
> it the sense that David Chipman finds so obvious.
>> They seem just to mean that phosphatidic acid is an essential substrate for
> various enzymes of lipid metabolism, not that "this is one of the
> metabolites which DEFINES
> in the conceptual sense" lipid metabolism, which would surely be absurd.
>> So does the "very clear and very obvious" sense apply only to the
> nonmevalonate pathway, or is phosphatidic acid not truly a key intermediate?
>> Among other things, Pedro wrote "'Key' used in this way is really a useless
> word, since then all enzymes are key... Remove any enzyme out of a pathway
> and it will no
> longer function."
>> True enough, of course, but it may be worth recalling the time 30 years ago
> (too long ago for Pedro to remember...) when what many people regarded as
> an important enzyme (I don't think anyone called it key) was chymotrypsin.
> Despite being one of the few possible exceptions to Pedro's rule, being one
> of the few enzymes that one can readily imagine life getting on quite well
> without (about as unkey as you could ask for), it had a considerable
> importance by virtue of being an enzyme that was available in large amounts
> and was reasonably stable. It thus allowed a lot of the groundwork of
> enzymology to be laid that would have been impossible to do with enzymes
> that might have seemed more interesting biologically.
>> Athel
>>>> ================================================================
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden
>> Laboratoire de Chimie Bacterienne, Centre National de la Recherche
> Scientifique, 31 chemin Joseph-Aiguier, B.P. 71, 13402 Marseille Cedex 20,
> France
>>athel at ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> Phone: + 33 491 16 41 38; fax: + 33 491 71 89 14
>>http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/~athel/homepage.htm>> Now available: Basic Mathematics for Biochemists (2nd edn.)
>http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/~athel/basmaths.htm>>> ---
³Key² is one of the most miss-used words in everyday vocabulary, not only in
this instance but throughout everyday speech and the media. Speakers and
authors seem to believe it bestows an implicit importance to their topic of
conversation. We now have ³key skills² in education circles, which rather
gratuitously, and for no good reason, replaced core skills a couple of years
ago. We have key stages one to five in school education. Since all levels are
Œkey stagesŒ, why is this redundant word used? The worst usage is the awful
mixed metaphor ³he has a key role to play in this scenario² ... visions of
actors dressed as giant keys strutting and soliloquizing about on a stage.
Some time ago I set up the campaign for the abolition of the adjective key
(CAK), but it seems to have been largely ignored.
