I was about to write something about this study led by Guri Giaever’s group from my beloved U of T MoGen department, when I saw the update from Derek Lowe’s blog on the same subject, where he and a few fellow chemists have spotted some silly chemistry mistakes.
First, they appear to recognize N-phenylbenzylamine and it’s biologically equivalent tautomer as two chemicals and apparently target two distinct cellular pathways.
Then there’s this issue with imidazole and protonated imidazole, which shouldn’t exist at all in a physiological buffer system.
And this one is particularly funny: they have this cyclohexa-2,4-dien-1-one

which should just be phenol indeed.
And there’s a few more examples of mis-nomenclature and small molecules invalid in a biological system like those.
What a shame on the authors! What a shame on the reviewers! and on Ron David, who is in the authorship list and whom I respect a lot.
PS. a note on Guri. Apparently she’s not at U of T anymore. She and her husband, another MoGen faculty, Corey Nislow have joined UBC since last year. Interesting move.