47. Why is the 2nd sentence important in an abstract? (mini-series: reading-28) Artwork

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Foundational Skills in Life Sciences

47. Why is the 2nd sentence important in an abstract? (mini-series: reading-28)

March 13, 2025 • Dr. Synaptologica • Episode 47

Let's analyze a single sentence in the Abstract of an impressive paper. It is the paper that led to the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This is the paper that we call the milestone article 1 (Please see below for details).

We will analyze the second sentence. Why is this sentence important? We will discuss four of my approaches to see that this sentence is important, beautiful and helpful for readers outside the field.

It is fun to spend one episode for just a single sentence, and think deep about how it reveals the authors' logic.

Here are two sets of links related to the paper written by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023.

Milestone Article 1:

“Suppression of RNA recognition by Toll-like receptors: the impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA” by Karikó, Buckstein, Ni & Weissman. Immunity, 23(2): 165-75, 2005.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2005.06.008
PDF: https://www.cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(05)00211-6.pdf
PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/

See the pull-down menu “Article Info” near the top of the article webpage (Use the DOI above to reach it).
Check the “User License” section which lists the “Elsevier user license”:
--- http://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/
--- https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/open-access-licenses/elsevier-user

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