Abstract for submission
178 → 176 words (−1%)One-shot example traded for a grounding contract
Library entry “Abstract for submission (RTIEC example)” · Writing · the guide's own worked example of the 2025 schema.
2025 · specify everything
**ROLE**
You are a senior molecular biologist and experienced scientific editor specializing in genome-maintenance pathways. Your audience is the multidisciplinary readership of *eLife*.
**TASK**
Generate a concise, 250-word abstract that accurately summarizes the attached manuscript for submission to *eLife*. Emphasize significance, methodological innovation, principal findings, and mechanistic insight.
**CONSTRAINTS**
* Length ≤ 250 words
* One structured paragraph—no subheadings
* First sentence: clear contextual hook (≤ 35 words)
* Final sentence: explicit statement of impact for the field
* Preserve all gene/protein symbols and numeric values exactly as provided
* Do **not** introduce data or citations absent from the manuscript
* Provide only the final abstract
**INFORMATION**
--- BEGIN MANUSCRIPT ---
{{manuscript}}
--- END MANUSCRIPT ---
**EXAMPLES**
Input excerpt:
"Deletion of **YFG** resulted in delayed S-phase progression and accumulation of γH2AX foci. Complementation with FLAG-YFG restored replication-fork velocity and suppressed DNA double-strand-break formation."
**Desired abstract fragment:**
"Loss of **YFG** compromises replication-fork integrity, inducing genome-wide DNA-damage signaling. Re-expression of epitope-tagged **YFG** rescues fork velocity and attenuates double-strand-break accumulation, establishing **YFG** as a pivotal guardian of DNA replication and repair."2026 · assign work
**GOAL**
A submission-ready *eLife* abstract of the manuscript below, legible outside genome maintenance: stakes, methodological advance, findings, mechanism.
**RELEVANT CONTEXT**
--- MANUSCRIPT ---
{{manuscript}}
--- END MANUSCRIPT ---
**CONSTRAINTS**
* Write to what the results show, not what the discussion claims.
* Ask before framing the central advance differently than the manuscript does.
**REQUIRED EVIDENCE**
* Every clause traces to the manuscript: no outside data, comparison, or citation.
* Symbols, allele names, numbers, and units copied, not recalled: no rounding, conversion, or renaming.
* Hedge mechanism as the manuscript hedges it; inferred is not demonstrated.
* If the manuscript will not support one of the four, name the gap and omit it.
**SUCCESS CRITERIA**
Before answering, confirm:
* ≤250 words, counted; opening sentence ≤35 words, no unglossed acronym.
* Every symbol and number matches the source.
* Mechanism stated, not a tour of the figures.
* Closing sentence says what changes for the field, and overclaims nothing.
**OUTPUT FORMAT**
One unbroken paragraph — no subheadings or preamble. Below a rule, list what the manuscript left unsupplied.What moved
- ROLE is deleted. Its only load-bearing half was "the multidisciplinary readership of *eLife*," which returns in GOAL as "legible outside genome maintenance" — a testable property of the draft rather than a costume worn while writing it — and becomes checkable in SUCCESS CRITERIA as "opening sentence ≤35 words, no unglossed acronym," replacing 2025's unverifiable "clear contextual hook."
- The four emphases survive as outcome content rather than instructions: "Emphasize significance, methodological innovation, principal findings, and mechanistic insight" becomes GOAL's "stakes, methodological advance, findings, mechanism." What is new is the backstop — "If the manuscript will not support one of the four, name the gap and omit it" — where 2025 demanded all four unconditionally and left the model to supply whichever one the paper lacked.
- EXAMPLES is dropped on principle, not for length. Its one-shot escalates a complementation rescue into "establishing **YFG** as a pivotal guardian of DNA replication and repair," the exact overclaim REQUIRED EVIDENCE now forbids, and seeds a fabricated gene into a prompt whose subject is not fabricating; the register lesson it carried rides instead on two checks, "Mechanism stated, not a tour of the figures" and "overclaims nothing."
- The two 2025 grounding bullets are promoted into REQUIRED EVIDENCE and sharpened: "Preserve all gene/protein symbols and numeric values exactly as provided" becomes "copied, not recalled: no rounding, conversion, or renaming," which names the actual failure mode — recall from training standing in for the source — while "Hedge mechanism as the manuscript hedges it; inferred is not demonstrated" adds a fidelity 2025 never asked for. The rest of that pile splits by kind: countable items to SUCCESS CRITERIA, layout ("One structured paragraph—no subheadings," "Provide only the final abstract") to OUTPUT FORMAT.
- CONSTRAINTS keeps only what the fully-specified 2025 prompt never stated — which part of the manuscript is authoritative ("Write to what the results show, not what the discussion claims") and one approval gate tuned to fire on a real fork rather than on every ambiguity ("Ask before framing the central advance differently than the manuscript does"). Net length barely moves, 178 words to 176, because this pair is a reallocation rather than a compression: the 62 words of the one-shot very nearly fund the 59-word REQUIRED EVIDENCE block that replaces it.