One of my jobs is reading lots of scientific papers, and I often have to look online to clarify spelling or accurate meanings of words (because I'm not a scientist), or to simply verify correct style.
A couple of words that often pop up (and their variants) are "upregulate" and "downregulate." Researchers often use a hyphen, and even Blogger is pointing out the errors, creating red squiggly lines below the words.
But according to Andrea Devlin, a professional science editor who was also schooled in science and seems super-serious and proficient in scientific writing, the hyphen should not be used: "Many scientists use up regulate or up-regulate; however, the correct form is upregulate. The same applies to downregulate, overexpress and underexpress, all of which should be written as a single word without a hyphen / dash or space."
I just saw those words today, with a hyphen, and I quickly corrected them. In the past, I'd have to look online to figure out the correct spelling. I think I'm pretty automatic at this point, but I still have to tackle other word-oriented issues.
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