Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mitochondrion/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 04:36, 22 January 2008.

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Mitochondrion

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This mitochondrion article has existed as a Good Article for some time. After considering the peer review from 2006, most or all of the issues appear to have been addressed. The article is far more referenced and expanded in terms of the basic science than it ever used to be. Further, it is free of edit wars and significant disputes. I believe it meets FAC criteria. This article deserves a chance at Featured Article status. Sedmic 17:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Please archive the peer review (see intructions at both WP:FAC and WP:PR regarding simultaneous listing at both places). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! Sedmic 00:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support: very good article :) --Brískelly 18:37, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose tentatively:
  1. Several key linked articles are redlinks, and some of the related articles basically rehash the content of this article but lack references (e.g. outer mitochondrial membrane)
  2. The "function" paragraph is unsupported by references
  3. The "mitochondrial diseases" paragraph needs fleshing out - perhaps a small table based on the references listing the diseases related to the mitochondrium. A clear distinction needs to be made between (1) mtDNA diseases, (2) autosomal/X-linked diseases involving a mitochondrial protein, (3) diseases in which the mitochondrium dysfunctions, but without an obvious genetic defect (e.g. secondary to oxidative stress).
  4. "See also" and "external links" need a trip to the laundromat. JFW | T@lk 20:56, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply: Thank you for your great comments! Here are my replies -

1. There are only 2 redlinks, one to translocase of the outer membrane and one to translocase of the inner membrane. I do not believe they are critical to understanding of mitochondrion, and I can remove them if you prefer. I have not had a chance to create these articles yet. I agree that some of the related articles need work. However, those are separate articles. A full breakdown of the proteins of the intermembrane space, for example, is beyond the scope of the mitochondrion article but would be better suited to a separate article. Again, it's something I will work on in due time.

The article on translocase of the outer membrane has just been added. I will add one for the inner membrane later. Sedmic 18:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

2. Done.

3. I'm not quite sure how to approach this one. The text is already split into mtDNA mutations, nuclear gene defects, and oxidative stress consequences. I added a few more diseases and refs to this section along with small rearrangements. I will consider how to better organize this section.

4. Agreed. Some links were changed and I'll continue to work on them. Sedmic 00:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support: I could not find any major issues that should prevent this article from becoming featured. The minor things, such as those mentioned above, are completely amenable, and some are even trivial. The article is comprehensive, accurate, well referenced, and lucid (i.e it would be understood by a layman). Kudos to the nominator and the main editors. Wisdom89 (talk) 00:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose
  • Too few references.
  • I saw vague words, "egg" and "protist", there are probably more
  • The functions section needs to be expanded, you mention steroid synthesis, heme synthesis, apoptosis etc but there is no text about it.
  • It has no illustrations of pathways, and no phylogenetic tree
  • No overview of what kind of compounds go in and out. Narayanese (talk) 13:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! These are some great suggestions. I would like some clarification, however.

1. Is there a specific section or series of statements that need better substantiating?

2. By vague, do you mean we should specify the species as in "human egg"?

3. The phylogenetic tree comment is a bit confusing. Is there a specific paper or reference you are thinking of? Mitochondria probably descended from a bacterial ancestor a long time ago. My (admittedly limited) understanding suggests phylogenetic trees from a couple billion years ago are probably not terribly reliable. I was not able to find any good pubmed sources for phylogeny on a quick search. Sedmic 07:06, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

1.Use in population genetic studies 2nd paragraph, Origin 1st paragraph, Storage of calcium ions, "anaerobic respiration, a process that is independent of the mitochondria." Function 1st list.

2. Eggs are what reptiles lay, but in your text it's used for oocytes. There is no easy way to tell what kind of protists for the reader since it's not mentioned in the abstracts, and protist is a pretty meaningless word by itself. Primitive = basal? (origin section)

3. If its not known at all which proteobacteria the metochondrion is descended from, say so in the text. But I remember seing somewhere a phylogenetic tree over proteobacteria with the mitochondrion in it, so it's out there somewhere. Here is one, but it's pretty poor, there probably is a nice review article somewhere with a good tree. Narayanese (talk) 09:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, you already have a discussion about it being hard to place mitochondia in a tree because the exact position is unkonwn, I missed it at the first read. So no proteobacterial tree needed. Though you might want to copy the tree in this paper to show which eukaryotes have mitochondria. Narayanese (talk) 11:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I've added references to many sections you mentioned. I need to do more work on the calcium section because I don't understand it well enough yet. I also added the specific protist and changed eggs to oocytes. I'll continue to work on the sections you mentioned. Thanks for the phylogenetic tree. Do you know if it would be a copyright violation to use figure 3 if I redraw it? Sedmic 01:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I am hesitant to expand the "Function" section by much. Each of those topics really merits its own article and would expand the mitochondrion article beyond the recommended size for FA. I agree that it needs more references and at least needs good links to pages with more information. What do you recommend? Sedmic 02:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving the table was a nice solution. I see the article is almost fully referenced now, good work. Narayanese (talk) 03:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comments There are a few places I'd like to see sources add, and please review WP:NBSP.
  • It looks like you've added nonbreaking spaces to some of the number unit/qualifier combinations, but not all. At least in the inner membrane section, non-breaking spaces are needed (1 protein, 15 phospholipids), and I haven't checked the other sections.

Good catch. I added the nbsp there and to a few other places. I'll go over it again in detail to see if any others were left out.Sedmic 06:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • I think you need a source for this claim: "There are no primitive eukaryotes today that lack mitochondria. The endosymbiosis with mitochondria may have played a critical part in the survival advantage of eukaryotic cells."

I'm not sure I can cite this. The statement was added on Aug 23, 2005 and it was not cited at that time. I imagine the statement means that there are no archaebacteria that lack mitochondria, but I'm not sure what the data for it is. I will remove that statement as it probably does not contribute anything meaningful to the article. There are certainly organisms without mitochondria and many more with. Further, I was unable to find a source after researching this a bit more. Sedmic 06:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • Is there a source for "However, genetic recombination means that these studies can be difficult to analyze."

There is not a good citation for this. The statement is intended to be a logical progression of the idea. In retrospect, I am finding the sentence more and more confusing. I'm not sure that it adds anything meaningful to the discussion. Sedmic 06:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Karanacs (talk) 15:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Neutral Since I'm not a scientist, I don't feel qualified to tell whether the article is comprehensive or not, so I can't vote support. It appears to meet the WP:MOS guidelines and is well-written. Karanacs (talk) 15:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose—This article has unexplained jargon and linked references to arcane knowledge. For example: "Larger proteins can also enter the mitochondrion via an N-terminal signaling sequence which permits translocation by a large multisubunit protein known as TOM". Really? Or, "Reducing equivalents from the cytoplasm can be imported via the malate-aspartate shuttle system of antiporter proteins or feed into the electron transport chain using a glycerol phosphate shuttle." Would this article be read and enjoyed by a student in High School? Somebody needs to go through the article and clarify the parts that currently require a degree in microbiology to understand. Some jargon that could use further clarification: long branch attraction, kilobases, polyadenylated, ubiquitin, haplotype, phospholipid, signal transduction, endoplasmic reticulum, &c., &c. Sorry.—RJH (talk) 17:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it insufficient that all of the above terms are linked to relevant pages that explain them more fully? Thanks Sedmic 06:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Philosophically, I don't think the reader should need to drill down to a new article every time there is a term they don't understand. "The first time an article uses a term that may not be clearly understood by a reader not familiar with the subject area ... introduce it with a short, clear explanation that is accessible to the normal English reader or based on terms previously defined in the article."—RJH (talk) 21:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.