While discussing this issue with my wife last night we came up with an
interesting hypothesis. The argument goes as follows: When describing
apoptosis to peers unfamiliar with the subject (I think there may be 10-20
left on the planet) I always here the standard "apoptosis - it comes from the
Greek and is translated as leaves falling from a tree". What if Kerr, Wyllie
and Currie were looking for a description not of leaves, but apples. This
seems to make more sense. The mental imagery and philosophy remains the same
as leaves and there would be no confusion on pronunciation (as opposed to how
you pronounce tomatoes). I hearby put forth the suggestion that apoptosis be
changed both in spelling and pronunciation to:
appletosis
I’m sure this is what Kerr, Wyllie and Currie intended.
In article <33201E8D.5EC6 at CASRDH.HEALTH.nt.com.au> Gary Lum
<Gary.Lum at CASRDH.HEALTH.nt.com.au> writes:>From: Gary Lum
<Gary.Lum at CASRDH.HEALTH.nt.com.au>>Subject: Re: APOPTOSIS?
>Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 23:26:30 +0930
>David Voehringer wrote:
>>>> When John Kerr was here he a few years ago, he pronounced it apo-tosis (apo -
>> like apoprotein and -tosis like mitosis). Seems to reason that since he named
>> it, his pronunciation should be used.
>>
>I concur, Professor Kerr, taught me pathology as an undergraduate and he
>pronounced it "apo-tosis".
>The second 'p' was silenced as far as students at the University of
>Queensland medical school were concerned.
>Regards
>Gary
>--
>********************************************************
>Dr Gary Lum
>Director of Microbiology
>Royal Darwin Hospital
>Microbiologists do it with culture and sensitivity
>Meet me at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~glum/index.html>E-mail me at glum at ozemail.com.au or gary.lum at nt.gov.au
David W. Voehringer
Department of Experimental Radiotherapy
Univ. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
1515 Holcombe Bvld.
Houston, Tx. 77030
(713) 792-3797
