Biotech Values

[vinmantoo]

{{That's fine. But the questions you ask and your other concerns are answered in the supplemental data to the paper, along with the related literature on this cell line and on c-Met. }}

I looked at both papers, the one Iwfal cited and the one you cited. I didn't see anything in supplemental data to exclude what Iwfal stated, or what I postulated. Rather than making a general dismissal, why don't you cite the specific part of supplemental data where the author's claims can be unambiguously shown.


{{Further, activating c-Met mutations are, by and large, missense mutations or amplifications.}}


That may well be true, but we aren't looking at by and large, Iwfal asked about the specific cell line TOV-112D, not the general mutations found in tumors.



{{ I've read of one example of an exon encoding a juxtamembrane region being skipped. None of those would be impacted by your concerns, even if relevant. As for c-terminal truncations, i'm not sure how numerous those examples are since that would truncate the kinase domain and it would not be an activating mutation.}}


I was postulating very c-terminal deletion that would eliminate the short terminal part of MET shown in Fig 1A as the CT domain, which is c-terminal to the kinase domain. If this region was also used in the SINGLE primer PCR used to detect the mRNA, then one wouldn't detect either the truncated C-MET protein or the mRNA. It doesn't matter if they made poly-clonal antibodies if they used that short region, it would still miss the putative deletion. If they used the full length C-MET protein to make polyclonal antibodies, and other parts of the protein had prominent epitopes which cross-reacted to the sera, then this wouldn't be an issue. So, did they use the entire protein to make antibodies, or was it a small c-terminal part? If they did a Northern blot rather than PCR using a SINLGE primer pair, it wouldn't be an issue either, but they didn't do a Northern Blot.



{{So is there a super-secret c-Met mutant that isn't captured by the RT-PCR or IP? Possible, but I'd ask
you to name it.}}


I already explained how it was possible to miss the protein by Western blot AND the mRNA by PCR using a single primer. If you have other papers which more precisely characterize the TOV-112D tumor cell line, then do so rather come back with than some snide comment. Quite frankly, I am surprised at your comments. You need a better attitude if you ever want to go from being a poorgradstudent to a poorpostdoc.