Talk:Fasciculin

From Proteopedia

Dear Proteopedia fellows and fasciculin users,

Please note that fasciculin variants require Arabic numerals (i.e., fasciculin 1, 2, 3 or Fas1, Fas2, Fas3), not Roman numerals (FasI, FasII, FasIII).

Reason #1 is that this is the way they were named and numbered by their finders, so why should we change this?

Reason #2 is that the choice of Arabic versus Roman numerals when naming a peptidic toxin is not only based on the godfather's choice but also relates to a code shared by toxinologists during the previous century. Indeed, in these old times the first step of toxin purification from a whole venom involved gel filtration, leading to rough fractions numbered with Roman numerals, then ion exchange chromatography, leading to fractions numbered with Arabic numerals. For those cases where a third step was required, lower-case letters could be added after the Arabic numerals.

This code might sound out of date now that more sophisticated means like HPLC etc are used for toxin purification. Yet, simply from their names, a toxinologist knows that fasciculins Fas1 and Fas2, which were purified from the same venom 3 decades ago, were separated from each other by ion exchange chromatography...