Talk:Beta-keratin

What is it?

The article talks about beta-keratin's structure, where it's found, etc., but never once tells the reader what it is. That should be in the first sentence. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Beta-keratin/CommentsTalk:Beta-keratin/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Is that last edit genuine ? It doesn't seem to read correctly. If there's no citation for the taint line perhaps it should be reverted ? Deorth (talk) 05:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 05:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 09:32, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Notes at bottom of the article

It appears that there are some sort of notes left at the bottom of the article; they are found below the box in the "External Links" section. It is unclear if that was a draft, should be weaved into the body of this article. or is mistakenly left there. I am fascinated by this topic but I am still learning so I do not want to change this material myself. Can someone with more knowledge provide insight into what should be done with this? Thank you. C19H12ampION (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

The text is still there, and I'm too still learning and don't have the confidence to edit it :) בצאת ישראל (talk) 08:06, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Same. This out of place text has now been there for 12 years, but a good cleanup will require a knowledgable editor.Ike9898 (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

After reading through the out-of-place text, I do understand it, and it's mostly tangential to the subject of the article. I don't think there is much in it to salvage that belongs in this article, although it is potentially good information. Dropping it. Ike9898 (talk) 15:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Artoria2e5 proposed a merge into Fibroin on 22 February 2019, without any justification. I OPPOSE because it seems to be a misunderstanding.

1. Beta-keratin is a vertebrate protein found in birds and reptiles.
2. Fibroin is an invertebrate protein found in insects (specifically silk).

So the huge difference warrants separate pages. Chhandama (talk) 03:44, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Chhandama: I agree that it's a bad idea. I put up some InterPro/Pfam boxes linking to protein databases, and they indeed are very different things. Gonna remove the merge box now. --Artoria2e5 🌉 04:11, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Page Length

Please improve the quality of this article by conducting more thorough research. XiGinFrenchBauxite (talk) 16:15, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Potential improvements

I think that this article could become better by avoiding oversimplification, exposing different (partially opposing) views on its subject, and discussing alternative terminology and its relation to gene evolution. I'll give some further comments on each subissue. JoergenB (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

@Boghog: Sorry for misspelling (and thus mispinging) your alias. The ping was for the whole section, but especially for the next subsection; and you're mentioned at the end of the one after that. JoergenB (talk) 13:51, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Avoiding oversimplification

@Boghod: I think that your fairly recent edits improved the article structure considerably. At the same time, both these and some earlier edits (by others) have tended to simplify some statements a bit too much. Some issues:

• Boghog, you changed the first sentence from "Beta-keratin (β-keratin) is a member of a structural protein family found in the epidermis of reptiles, birds, and pangolins" to "Beta-keratin (β-keratin) is a structural protein found in the epidermis of reptiles, birds, and pangolins". I'm going to restore the older formulation. I agree that the lead should be short, and thus should not strive after containing "all the truth" (where you may read "truth" as an abbreviation of "statements verifiable by WP:RS's"); but it should contain "nothing but the truth", even when expressing a true statement takes a few more words. The article subject is not just one proteine. JoergenB (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
• There was a shift in terminology among some authors in the 2010's. I'm not convinced the new terminology forms a consensus. More about this later.

Exposing different views

• This article now claims explicitly that (a) β-keratin occur among pangolins, and implicitly (b) that it does not occur among mammals. The claim (b) is also made (repeatedy and explicitly) in the article Keratin. However, since pangolins undisputedly are mammals, both (a) and (b) cannot hold.
  IMHO, (a) is the more commonly held opinion; but (b) is supported by a reference to Meyer W, Liumsiricharoen M, Suprasert A, Fleischer LG, Hewicker-Trautwein M (September 2013). "Immunohistochemical demonstration of keratins in the epidermal layers of the Malayan pangolin (Manis javanica), with remarks on the evolution of the integumental scale armour". European Journal of Histochemistry. 57 (3): e27. doi:10.4081/ejh.2013.e27. PMC 3794358. PMID 24085276. from 2013, which indeed states (b); as does e. g. Wang, Bin; Yang, Wen; Sherman, Vincent R.; Meyers, Marc A. (2016). "Pangolin armor: Overlapping, structure, and mechanical properties of the keratinous scales". Acta Biomaterialia. 41. Oxfordshire, England: Elsevier: 60–74. doi:10.1016/j.actbio.2016.05.028. PMID 27221793. from 2016.
  This article should make the contradiction between these two statements explicit to the reader. If there is some academic consensus supporting (a) or (b), we could simplify a little, by citing the other statement as a minority or abandoned position. (Personally, I suspect that this issue is related to the ones concerning the naming, and to whether structural differences in the expressed tissues or gene homology should be the main ingredient in an operative definition of this proteine group. In other words, perhaps some proteins in pangolins qualify as " old sense β-keratins" but not as "new sense corneous β-protein". More about this later.)
• Similarly, an article in 1999 found that a certain fossilised dinosaur had β-keratin of a certain type in its skin, but an article from 2018 came to another conclusion. The older article version described briefly both results, by methods, and noted that the more recent article considered itself having refuted the older one. Boghog simplified this by abbreviating the discussion, and by declaring the old result refuted by the new one. Actually, I think that the issue was not at all whether dinosaur skins contained β-keratins, but whether this dinosaur skin contained β-keratins "of feather type" rather than just ones "of scale type"; and I do not know whether the refutation is accepted by a consensus or not. Quite possibly it is; but then this should be supported by reliable sources. Anyhow, since the existence of β-keratin in extant reptile scales and bird feathers is well established, and the existence in dinosaur skin inferred and (I believe) undisputed, as (as far as I know) is the fact that some dinosaurs wore feathers of some kind. The true issues here are related to in which order different "bird features" evolved; including whether some kind of flight (or other aereal movements) predated or followed the development of this or that kind of feathers. (Reservation: I've not read the two referred articles, just references to the issues. I, or whoever else resolves this, probably should at least glance at them.) JoergenB (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

A title based mostly on expressed structure or on homology?

• Lorenzo Alibardi's article Transition from embryonic to adult epidermis in reptiles occurs by the production of corneous beta-proteins from 2014 contains the main arguments for a change of terminology from "β-keratin" to "corneous β-protein"; in particular, in the Discussion section. I do not know whether he was the first one to argue this change; but I did note that in an article published 2013 he still uses the old terminology, while he has been at least a coauthor of such later articles employing the new one as we quote. Actually, I do not know to what extent the new terminology represents just an important part or a new academic consensus. The article by Wang et al. (vide supra) from 2016 still employs the old terminology; as does the external source we give, beta-Keratins at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) (as of today, January 7, 2026). This MeSH item has not been updated since 2007. On the other hand, Keratins at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) was updated in 2022, and still retains the split into α-keratin and β-keratin, based on differences in the expressions. I also searced for "corneous" in MeSH, but found no reference at all, except the one in the item "beta-Keratins".
  The conclusion is that MeSH completely retains the old terminology, and does not even recognise Alibardi's as alternative. Now, the MeSH is devoted to "biomedical and health-related information"; which should tend to make proteins not at all appearing in Homo sapiens of less priority. It is possible that the new terminology indeed is accepted as the only recommended one by some biologist organ or community. However, in absence of documenting this, I think that we should treat β-keratin as the presently more correct name and corneous β-protein as a newly suggested alternative name. Even if we do find documentation supporting the terminology change, IMHO, the MeSH items demonstrate that the older one is not obsolete or wrong, but still at least correct in some context. (However, in the latter case, we should move the side title.)
  The conclusions hold, mutatis mutandis, also for the article Keratin.
• However, Alibardi arguments for a name change in themselves are rather interesting. He argues that while what he names glycine-rich corneous beta-proteins (formerly indicated as beta-keratins) belong to the Epidermal differentiation complex (EDC), the (α)-keratins are situated at another locus. Both in mammals and in sauropsids, he claims, (α)-keratins and EDC proteins together form the keratinocytes; thus, the so called β-keratins in reality only are different kinds of modifiers of the one and only true kind of keratins:

"The formation of the beta-corneous layer derives from the deposition of Corneous beta-proteins and the following masking or degradation of alpha-keratins, and not on the replacement of alpha-keratin with beta-keratin as previously indicated (Baden and Maderson, 1970; Maderson, 1985; Chang et al., 2009)."

Whether or not Alibardi's new terminology for β-keratins is accepted as the main one, his statements about their homology and their function in the formation of keratinocytes should be added to the article, either as the present state-of-the-art, or at least as one view about their relationship to other genes and gene expressions. JoergenB (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)