Wikipedia talk:USEP/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg 2013/Group 81C

Initial Article Thoughts

Hi Jason, it looks like we're to decide on an article this week. Below are my thoughts on just the 4 articles we both assessed last week. With all of these, they are obviously rated at a "stub" quality, but also of "high" importance. What strikes me when I compare the 2 you selected and the 2 I selected is that both of the articles I happened to select already have quite a bit of material compared to the ones you chose. I believe you used the term "clean slate" on one, which is very true. That has both pluses and minuses, I suppose, but probably more pluses. I'm not sure if you'd like to "widen the field" and re-look at any of the articles outside these 4. If so, I'm certainly game.

Cyclic Nucleotide: This article would seem to require the most attention because of its central importance to the cellular/molecular biology subject matter, as well as the lack of information here.
Flourescent Tags: Again, hardly anything here. There's a lot of information in Unit 6 (including the animation) that could help the target audience.
Lysogenic Cycle: Compared to the first 2 articles, there's quite a lot here.
Nonsense Strand: Again, definitely more here than the first two.

Overall, my recommendation would be to go with the article on Cyclic Nucleotides, given both how little there is and how central the subject matter is to the field. I keep going back to one of the wikipedia videos that emphasized how the target audience isn't necessarily an expert in the field, but rather the average layperson who might read a news report or something similar that piques their interest enough to look into it on wikipedia. Since the cyclic nucleotide subject matter is such a basic foundation to the science, it would seem that revising this article would be a more valuable contribution. If for some reason we can't select this one (i.e., another group may beat us to it), my 2nd recommendation would be Flourescent Tags, as this subject matter is more of a practical application that readers might read about in passing and seek more about it. Davidwhanks (talk) 05:11, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, you've summed things up pretty well. I agree with your assessment of the articles, and in particular the cyclic nucleotides. I think there are some model articles available for comparison, as well as a lot of reference material. We should be able to make a pretty substantial contribution. I'll reserve the article. Dugalmaguire (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, okay, I thought that more would be gone. I've reserved cyclic nucleotides, but there are a lot more available in case you had something else in mind, I'm open, let me know. I like your thoughts on why this would be a good article to work on (basic science, substantial contribution), I think we should incorporate it into our justification for selection. Dugalmaguire (talk) 14:37, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again David. I've started the article selection rationale section of our group page. I liked your reasoning, because I think it can be applied to a lot of the articles, so I've put some initial points down (a stub I guess) for us to flesh the rest of the week. I think this will be a good one. At work we have access to some online journals that I can't access from home, so if there's any one you find that looks interesting but requires a subscription, let me know, we'll see if it's available, but I guess we need to try and stick to freely available sources when possible? Abstracts are always available for free, so I'm not entirely sure about that... Dugalmaguire (talk) 15:31, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jason, thanks much for the work on this so far. I've thought about it some more, and I keep coming back to the wikipedia "target audience" being the general layperson who might be looking for a synopsis to start, and our surprise that so little is already here with this article. I'm excited to take on this article for our project! Our challenge may actually be in keeping what we create confined in a reasonable way. That is, we'll have to be disciplined about what we address, and adhere to an outline (which I'm guessing will likely be the next step within the next week or so). Thanks for starting the rationale. I think what you have looks really good; I'll dive into it in more detail tomorrow evening (Mon) and propose any additions if I can think of any. Thanks for starting the work to find references. I agree that we should probably focus on freely-available resources that readers will be able to find. I'm thinking that PubMed will be key as well as other sources. Since this is rather introductory material for cellular/molecular biology, relatively speaking, we will likely find very good, open-source references, to include images and likely animations. Davidwhanks (talk) 03:32, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jason, I've read back through what you've written for the rationale, and I think you've stated our reasoning very well and succintly. I don't have anything more to add. It basically comes down to how important the subject matter is, and what little the article currently provides the reader. I'm good with the rationale as-written. Thanks again. Davidwhanks (talk) 02:58, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, that's great! I guess it's research time then. Thanks. Dugalmaguire (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclic Nucleotides Article Thoughts

Article outline suggestions Dugalmagure

Hi David, how's it going? I had some initial thoughts about the article's construction. These are completely up for discussion, let me know what you think. The article can have a general flow of lower to higher order information in terms of cellular significance. I don't know that these are very good 'actual' headers, hopefully the text of those will come naturally as the article progresses :)

Chemistry of cNMPs
1. structure, what makes it cyclical (this is already present to some extent in the article)
2. the basic components of the structure (maybe this goes first?)
Biochemistry
1. synthesis in regards to biological pathways
2. locations where cNMPs can generally be found in the cell or certain tissues
Biology
1. examples of biological significance like their role in gated ion channels (there's a lot there!)
2. examples of disruptions of cNMP pathways

This outline could be divided up fairly easily it seems, I'm fine either way with whomever's sandbox we use. Dugalmaguire (talk) 16:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jason, thanks for putting this together. I think this is a really good outline. Under #1 Chemistry, I agree that the basic structure components might go first. In fact, here, we probably not only want to discuss the base, sugar, and phosphate, but might also present the common abbreviations, and how the atoms are numbered. Those basic pieces of background up-front might help the audience. If wikipedia already has solid pages on each nucleotide, we might also consider linking to these pages. For "structure", we might consider explicitly drawing a distinction between cyclic nucleotides and nucleotides in order to avoid confusion.

I think the sequence you have makes a lot of sense. After reviewing some notes and textbook, things that stood out to me from a general sense that we might consider adding include:

starting the page with a general introduction discussing their importance in biochemistry and biological pathways.
Discussing history (when discovered, by whom, how, etc.). Perhaps this would be better placed toward the beginning. More detailed historical information, such as important milestones in understanding their role, etc., might also be appropriate. However, it would be best to put this at the end because I think an understanding of some of the basics of the science and pathways should be understood before one could appreciate the historical details.

I like how you've organized sections 2 and 3, presenting biochemistry first before the biology. Something we might change in the biology area is, before providing examples of biological significance, we can instead explain their roles as 2nd messengers and in signaling, generally, first. Then we can provide examples.

Should we also discuss their degradation? Or would "disruptions of cNMP pathways" be a logical place to put this topic?

My only other thought is that the article references and inline citations should link to free sources of information. I will start combing for some good options tomorrow evening. Cheers! Davidwhanks (talk) 02:49, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, I really like the historical milestones bit, that sounds like a perfect way to wind down the article. I'll get this moved and updated to the sandbox (we can just use mine), as well as the talk page for the article. I'll move my existing articles (I agree about freely available, one of mine may not be), as well as start searching for more. great! Dugalmaguire (talk) 14:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jason, looks great. The plan is really coming together. Davidwhanks (talk) 02:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After first pier review

Hi David, It looks like we've both responded pretty well to the suggestions given by reviewers. Is there anything you can think of or would want to make happen for this weeks contribution? I feel pretty good about it all. Dugalmaguire (talk) 19:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After second review

Hi David, I altered the first paragraph of the history section, it read a bit awkward. please feel free to update as you see fit. thanks for a great project, i'm pretty proud of it! Dugalmaguire (talk) 18:31, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jason, thanks much for doing that. I focused primarily on the History section the last couple of nights, making a number of changes Keilana suggested. I hadn't gotten to reworking the prose of the section yet, which is what I'll take a stab at tonight. Thanks for doing the 1st paragraph already. I think it got especially awkward after I changed it from a bulleted list to paragraph form. I've got a number of other changes still to make in the chemistry and biology sections, but altogether, I agree that it looks pretty far along at this point. Thanks for doing so much on this one. Best of luck to you throughout the program! Cheers, Davidwhanks (talk) 00:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]