Who’d have thought that in a competition between scientific research papers on the wonders of sex, the bizarre mini-universe of quantum physics, the age and size of the cosmos, the last universal common ancestor, the wingspan of giant condors and the implications of relativity, the top three most cited papers would be about proteins?

The most recent issue of Nature, one of the world’s leading academic journals, has a fascinating article about the most popular papers in science.

The top three – and here you need to take a very deep breath – are “Protein measurement with the folin phenol reagent” (1951), “Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of head of the bacteriophage T4” (1970), and “A rapid and sensitive method for the quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principles of protein-dye binding” (1976).

I didn’t even know “quantitation” was a word, let alone part of the title of a scientific articles that has over 150,000 citations.

For the full wherefore and whyfore, go read the article. In the end, as it generally does in science, it all makes sense.