Omission of citing prior work.

TO THE EDITOR: We write you regarding an article named " Isolation and characterization of cholangiocyte primary cilia, " published by Huang et al. in September of 2006 (1). The Introduction of this article ends with the following sentences: " Despite these findings, our understanding of the functions of the primary cilium and its role in responding to environmental stimuli are still poorly understood. Thus a detailed characterization of ciliary morphology under normal and pathological conditions, the development of approaches for the isolation of primary cilia, and an identification of ciliary-specific proteins are essential steps to further study the functions of these organelles. In the present study, we provide a detailed multidimensional morphological description of cholangiocyte cilia and describe two novel approaches to isolate enriched ciliary fractions from cultured cholangio-cytes. " We were deeply disturbed when we read this article and found that Huang et al. failed to refer to published work from our laboratories. Namely, in Mitchell et al. (2) we reported the first protocol for the isolation, as well as the characterization by biochemical methods and electron microscopy, of primary cilia from kidney cells. Our work was published and widely available online since July 13, 2004. More importantly, if one types the key words " isolation/primary/cilium " in Entrez-PubMed, Mitchell et al. is the third article listed. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how Huang et al. were unable to locate and cite peer-reviewed work that is highly relevant to their research subject. Our chief concern is for the effect of this omission on Kimberly P. Mitchell, a young Ph.D. candidate at our department , who has done most of the work, experimental and intellectual, in our article. Kimberly has already two publications and shows great potential as a future researcher and teacher in physiology. However, we fear for her future enthusiasm for an academic career, given that her work does not receive the acknowledgement it fully deserves. We sincerely hope that you can correct this oversight. A de S. NDP kinase moves into developing primary cilia.