In the Wikipedia page for Short Linear Motifs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_linear_motif), the first definition is attributed to Tim Hunt in 1990: "The sequences of many proteins contain short, conserved motifs that are involved in recognition and targeting activities, often separate from other functional properties of the molecule in which they occur. These motifs are linear, in the sense that three-dimensional organization is not required to bring distant segments of the molecule together to make the recognizable unit. The conservation of these motifs varies: some are highly conserved while others, for example, allow substitutions that retain only a certain pattern of charge across the motif.”
The problem is that Hunt did not appear to write these words. If you follow the citation and get the PDF from Science Direct, the source is an unattributed editorial box highlighting a new series in the journal about SLiMs. It ends: "We are indebted to Tim Hunt, who first suggested this series..." - therefore I think it is unlikely that Hunt was the author. I am also somewhat doubtful that this really was the first definition of a linear motif as they were clearly already being studied and recognised - this is not a proposal for such recognition.
Does anyone know who the author of this quote was? (I cannot find who the editor of TIBS was in 1990.) Furthermore, does anyone know of an older quote alluding to "linear motifs" as a discrete class of functional protein sequence elements?
If you consider linear antigenic epitopes as "a discrete class of functional protein sequence elements" they were described long time ago. You may try to find reference to those in "The Antigenic Structure of Proteins: A Reappraisal
Annual Review of Immunology
Vol. 2: 67-101 (Volume publication date April 1984)
D C Benjamin, J A Berzofsky, I J East, F R N Gurd, C Hannum, S J Leach, E Margoliash, J G Michael, A Miller, E M Prager, M Reichlin, E E Sercarz, S J Smith-Gill, P E Todd, and A C Wilson.
The classification of linear (sequential) epitopes was expressed, for example, here: Sela, M., Schechter, B., Schechter, I. & Borek, F. (1967) Cold Spring Harbor
Symp. Quant. Biol. 32, 537–545.javascript:
Thanks Andreas & Andrew, although these are a bit too specific. Immunological epitopes, whilst short and linear, are something discrete from SLiMs, which are more general and mediate "normal" protein-protein interactions. (The genetic mechanisms that generate antibodies are bit special.) Nuclear localisation motifs certainly count but in this paper (judging from the abstract) they appear to identify a short peptide sequences and speculate that it "may represent a prototype of similar sequences in other nuclear proteins". I'll track down the PDF, though, and check out papers that cite it.
I'm really after the first published declaration that short binding motifs with sequence-specificity but little/no structural constraint are important for numerous proteins/pathways/functions and thus constitute a class of elements worthy of consideration in their own right. (As the 1990 TIBS editorial box does.)
Thanks, Andreas. I am indeed following up some leads from this and some of the other early papers (e.g. the original ELM paper). I posted this question as a potential (lazy!) short-cut, in case someone out there knew of a decent direct quote. The fact that there is no single go-to paper that we all use makes me wonder whether such a quote exists at all, which is perhaps why the slightly weak "Hunt" citation keeps popping up despite it not being a peer-reviewed article and having unclear authorship. I'll try contacting TIBS too - and maybe even Tim Hunt if I can find his contact details.
Hi all: I am a postdoc from Marc Wilkin's team. Thou shalt not worry! I found the members of the entire editorial Board of TiBS for you using my bioinformatics skill.
Editorial Board: R. A. Bradshaw (editor-in-chief), lrvine, USA
R. Arnon, Rehovot, Israel
A. R. Fersht, Cambridge, UK
C. Guthrie, San Francisco, USA
T. Hunt, Cambridge, UK
W. Junge, Osnabr0ck, FRG
D. I. Meyer, Los Angeles, USA
Y. Nishizuka, Kobe, Japan
P. Schimmel, Cambridge, USA
P. Srere, Texas, USA
P. H. von Hippel, Eugene, USA
Editor: M. E. Purton, Cambridge, UK
The oldest reference on short linear motifs found did come from Tim Hunt.
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