Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Genetics/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular Biology. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Project Creation

The original proposal for the project can be found here Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Genetics.

Getting started

Now that the project has been started, there's plenty of work that needs doing. To get things rolling, I'd like to set up a project banner for tagging articles. I think that some of the articles within our scope – e.g., DNA, Genetic engineering, Human Genome Project – could potentially be included in Wikipedia:Version 1.0, so I'd also like to set up an assessment department (which sounds more formal than it really is) to help the V1.0 Editorial Team keep track of them. Comments welcome. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 02:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's a start: Template:Wikiproject Genetics, should show up if you add {{Wikiproject Genetics}} to a talk page. I created it with Template:WPBannerMeta, which you can expand with things like article importance, assessment, etc... -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 00:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I expanded to add assessments, currently redlinked to a hypothetical page within WikiProject Genetics. I've taken the banner for a test run by adding it to Talk:Genetics. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 14:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking good! I went and added it to Category:WikiProject banners. – Clockwork Soul 16:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment page is up and running. I'd appreciate some feedback on the importance scheme, but if everyone thinks it's okay, we can start tagging and assessing articles in earnest. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this wikiproject should cover people. MCB doesn't cover people. It's really a different class of articles, and there are a lot of them. When someone enters the project wanting to improve genetics articles they're probably not thinking about editing Oswald Avery.
I'm glad you've included "lay person" / "recognition" in the ranking! I think page popularity should contribute significantly to the importance ratings. Here's a useful tool you can use to look at pageviews: [1]

article	pageviews in 4/08	proposed importance
DNA	302,886	Top
Genetic engineering	93,799	Top
Gregor Mendel	58,190	High
Allele	41,989	High
Epigenetics	30,046	Mid
Kay Davies	303	Mid
Impalefection	198	Low
X hyperactivation	45	Low

Everything looks roughly in line here. It looks like Epigenetics would be more like High and Kay Davies Low ... Mid would be something in the single digit thousands to 500, and Low in the sub 500 range? Alternatively, just start classifying things without worrying to much about it, and later I can make a table comparing page views with importance rankings (I did this earlier, so it's semi-automated). Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Popularity isn't irrelevant, but I don't think we should be using it as the only or even the main criteria for importance. Sex would be a very popular article too, though I suspect most of the people that go to it are actually looking for sexual intercourse, or perhaps internet pornography. How important it is as part of a network of articles on genetics is the real question, and something like a textbook on genetics would probably be a much better indicator of this.

Regarding biographies, I think they are relevant to genetics if the person contributed seriously to the science. Editors here may not be experts on writing biographies, but then biographers aren't experts on writing about genetics, and you need to know your genetics if you are going to write a good article about a geneticist. Richard001 (talk) 08:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The sex example is a distracting irrelevance, the vast majority of cases do not have this ambiguity. A lot of people are going to genetic engineering (and I'm pretty sure they're interested in "genetic engineering") even though it's not a core genetics subject in a textbook. Because of this, I think Liveste's ranking of it as Top is justified.

With people, I just worry that could get out of hand, there are so many geneticists. Did Kay Davies "contribute seriously" to the science? How are we going to make this call? My google search on "geneticist" finds ~ 1770 matches [2] -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 19:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This is pretty much why I requested feedback. What underlying purpose do we want for the importance scale for this project? I can see two possibilities:

Reader-oriented: The importance scale ranks articles by how likely the average reader will be familiar with or interested in them. Top-importance articles are those that the average reader would be more interested in getting encyclopedic information from, and that these articles are where initial improvement efforts should be directed. Higher-importance articles in this scheme are more likely to be included in a traditional encyclopedia.
Topic-oriented: The importance scale ranks articles by how important they are to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the field. Starting from "Genetics" or "DNA", a reader is likely to progress to other top-importance articles, and from there to high-importance articles, with occasional investigation into articles of less importance. This is similar to the way a textbook would be set out, with "Genetics" as the title, and top-importance articles being equivalent to chapter headings, etc.

If anyone can think of other underlying purposes, please outline them here. One way in which the two approaches above differ is their treatment of articles such as human cloning and genetically modified food. These are of relatively minor interest in genetics research, but are well known outside the scientific community; conversely, genomics is vital to the field, but hardly well known to non-scientists (excepting the Human Genome Project). But considering that Wikipedia is trying to emulate a traditional encyclopedia, I would favour a more reader-oriented approach. As for biographies, I don't really mind either way. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

How about a modification to the template -and option to switch from 'this article is within the scope of the Genetics project' to 'parts of this article are within the scope og the Genetics project' and maybe a subcategory of their own like 'Articles with genetics sections' ? LeeVJ (talk) 15:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any particular article in mind? Usually if an article is only partially related to the subject of a WikiProject, it's considered to fall within the scope of that WikiProject. Nevertheless, if we had enough "partially relevant" articles we could do something different – it wouldn't be difficult. – Liveste (talk • edits) 22:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the reference to geneticist biographies, but was also bearing in mind articles on disease and traits which include a genetic predisposition or element like pain tolerance, heart disease, one's where they are mostly out of scope but we might be able to manage keeping relevant sections in order ? LeeVJ (talk) 23:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to Genetics

The AfD for an "intro to PCR" article has me thinking about this again. I've been unhappy with the link to Introduction to Genetics placed at the top of Genetics, which now has FA status. The intro article is poor quality (but started when the main article was also poor quality, so understandable). Should we be guiding readers to this article from the main article? Should it even exist? Would anyone like to improve it? What should be done with it? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 22:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

My interpretation is that the lead IS the introduction for the casual reader, then if they, wish the body of the article goes into more detail - I think I saw it in the manual of style. In short no, the intro article shouldn't exist, and if it seems to be needed, then genetics article isn't yet perfect and might need a but of gentle tailoring. LeeVJ (talk) 00:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The idea of "introduction to" articles is not to duplicate the lead section (which itself is not an introduction but a summary) of the 'normal' article, but to provide an article that is less technical for readers. There are several such articles (e.g. introduction to evolution, introduction to general relativity, etc). We don't seem to have a page describing such articles though (Wikipedia:Introductory articles or something like that would be good, assuming we wish to keep any reasonable number of such articles). Some subjects require the article to be fairly technical to explain it properly, so the 'intro to' articles are a simplified version for those that can't cope well with this, e.g. those with no real education in biology and chemistry in this case. They are suitable for people with no prior knowledge of the subject and perhaps for younger people, whose command of English may not be very developed either (some people may not admit it, but Wikipedia is hardly very friendly to younger readers).

Having said what I think their role is though, I'm not saying I necessarily agree that the article, or such articles in general, should exist. I think they should be reserved for articles that have reached a virtually perfect state and which are quite difficult to comprehend for the layperson. There certainly needs to be a decent amount of differentiation between the articles, e.g. the introduction should be written in simpler language, be relatively short and be understandable for almost anyone. At this stage the introduction to genetics article is very underdeveloped and what direction it is going is unclear, and seemingly undecided. I wouldn't be strongly opposed to deleting it, but I think it should be discussed first as it will be a fairly important article if we should decide to keep and work on it. Richard001 (talk) 08:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

(Sorry for the later response here) I agree on all counts. In some cases an introductory article is justified and gets attention and becomes useful. I brought it up because it'd be nice to get discussion on it. :-)

I don't feel able to write the article... because I tried so hard to make Genetics accessible, I have trouble seeing what further simplifications are needed and how it should be done. But definitely if someone has an idea of how to do it I'd be happy to help. I haven't seen anyone interested though and it may be nobody feels the article is particularly needed. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 06:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I write about medicine for a living. I'll go to a meeting and find out about the latest research and write about it. The first question I ask myself when I start to write about it is whether I'm writing for laymen or professionals (MDs, usually). If I'm writing for laymen, there is a lot of good, interesting stuff that I have to throw out because I know from talking to laymen that the overwhelming majority of them won't understand it. (I'm not a teacher so I can't stand up in class and force them to listen.)

Wikipedia, according to the rules, is written for the ordinary reader, not the specialist. That's a rule that we often flout, and I'll go along with flouting it. There are some articles on proteins and genes (the ones that I look up myself when I'm trying to get through the NEJM) that are so technical that the ordinary reader couldn't understand them. I think that's OK because a lot of the users and editors of Wikipedia are biology students (often on the graduate level) who find this very useful. But if we had to follow Wikipedia rules, somebody could force us to rewrite them for the non-specialist, and they would be so simple that they wouldn't be useful for the advanced student any more.

That's what would happen to Genetics. It's a good, thorough article, and I would read it myself to make sure I understand certain basic concepts, but a lot of it is beyond the comprehension of an ordinary lay reader. (Advanced placement or A-level high school science students could understand it, but the science students in the working-class school down the street from me couldn't understand it).

So Introduction to Genetics is a compromise. In Genetics, we're ignoring the Wikipedia rules that require articles to be understandable by the ordinary layman. It's not. (See Talk:Introduction_to_genetics for examples.) In compromise, we created Introduction to Genetics that fully meets the rules about ordinary readers

If we deleted Introduction to Genetics, somebody could correctly demand that you dumb down Genetics to be more understandable to non-specialists. That would be a shame. Nbauman (talk) 14:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't personally find the Introduction to genetics article very readable or useful . I can see how User:Madeleine_Price_Ball wouldn't like it being referred to "for a generally accessible and less technical introduction to the topic" on the top of the Genetics article. IMO the article Genetics is accessible to someone of high school education level as terms are wiki linked. I don't see anyone wanting to dumb it down! I'd send Introduction to Genetics to WP:AfD and see what other wikipedians think. Nk.sheridan Talk 00:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I talk to a lot of cancer patients, and also to a lot of other normal, educated people who don't particularly follow biology, and my sense is that they would have a hard time getting through this. The vocabulary alone would be OK for advanced placement high school students, but not for ordinary high school students. I was just talking to a high school science teacher at a center-city school, and I know his kids couldn't get through this.

What makes you think this Genetics article is accessible to a non-specialist reader with no more than a high school education? Nbauman (talk) 05:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Tho I haven't thought a lot about the question of Introduction to XYZ articles, I have an opinion after reading this thread. We have a sister project called Simple English, and that is where the very "dumbed down", to put it that way, intro should be. If people on Talk pages complain about the level of articles here, they should be gently guided to Simple English. But then people here should feel a responsibility to follow up articles "over there" so that they don't give directly wrong info. --Hordaland (talk) 02:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a guideline about "introduction to XYZ" articles at Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible#"Introduction to..." articles. My quick reaction (based on just a quick glance) is that Genetics is probably not so technical that a separate introduction is needed. But I can see both sides to the argument. Kingdon (talk) 05:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Simple English is a lot lower than the level you're looking at for 'introduction to' articles. Simple English is for people who don't speak much English or are a bit left of center on the bell curve. 'Introduction to' is more for people that don't have much or any specialist knowledge in the area concerned, so introduction to genetics would be more for an adult who has never studied biology, except perhaps at high school. The way things are at the moment I think an AFD wouldn't be a bad idea, unless someone(s) wants to set out what they want to article to achieve, how it's going to be different from genetics, and actually start doing it. Richard001 (talk) 07:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Updates

I revised the project banner and added some project categories. Additionally, I expanded the project page with some headings typical of a WikiProject. Also, you might want to check these pages and these pages to see whether the project banner should be posted on the article talk page (if not already so done). That same list can be used to tag the article page with one or more genetics subcategories (if not already so done), many of which can be seen here and otherwise are subcatetories of Category:Genetics. GregManninLB (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I posted a request here to have a bot tag all the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with {{WikiProject Genetics|class=Stub|importance=Low|imageneeded=|imagedetails=|unref=|nested=}}. GregManninLB (talk) 02:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for all your help! A lot of this stuff I wouldn't have thought of and/or didn't know how to do. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Tag Genetics stubs with project template (copied from here)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests
WikiProject Genetics is a new WikiProject. Would you please have a bot tag the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with {{WikiProject Genetics|class=Stub|importance=Low|imageneeded=|imagedetails=|unref=|nested=}}. If the bot can determine that the article is unreferenced, please have the bot use |unref=yes as well. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Doing... The tagging with User:John Bot. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Done mostly. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 00:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, if this is allowed, can you have a bot post a notice on the talk pages of Wikipedians interested in genetics to let them know about the new WikiProject Genetics. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It is allowed, but you should specify the message so that a bot owner doesn't have to guess at it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I've made a start on an invite template at Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics/Invite, for which I basically copied the code from the Novels WikiProject invite template. If you like it, feel free to use it – feel free to modify it as well. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 14:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That looks great! I've submitted the request here, as recommended by Greg, Wikipedia:Bot_requests#WikiProject_Genetics_invitation, hope that's okay. Thanks! Madeleine ✉ ✍ 14:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Addsure has fnished it already! LeeVJ (talk) 13:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

A list of categories

Help me ensure these categories are in the one. A-Class Genetics articles A-Class medical genetics articles Applied genetics Automatically assessed Genetics articles B-Class Genetics articles B-Class medical genetics articles Category-Class Genetics pages Classical genetics Computational phylogenetics Cytogenetics Disambig-Class Genetics pages Epigenetics FA-Class Genetics articles FA-Class medical genetics articles FL-Class Genetics articles GA-Class Genetics articles GA-Class medical genetics articles Genetics Genetics articles by importance Genetics articles by quality Genetics articles needing attention Genetics articles needing expert attention Genetics books Genetics experiments Genetics infobox templates Genetics journals Genetics literature Genetics or genomics research institutions Genetics organizations Genetics past collaborations Genetics past selected articles Genetics past selected biographies Genetics past selected pictures Genetics stubs Genetics templates High-importance Genetics articles Human genetics Image-Class Genetics pages List-Class Genetics articles Low-importance Genetics articles Medical genetics Medical genetics articles by quality Medical genetics images Mid-importance Genetics articles Mitochondrial genetics Molecular genetics NA-Class Genetics pages NA-importance Genetics articles Non-article Genetics pages Old requests for Genetics peer review Phylogenetics Population genetics Portal-Class Genetics pages Project-Class Genetics pages Redirect-Class Genetics pages Requests for Genetics peer review Start-Class Genetics articles Start-Class medical genetics articles Statistical genetics Stub-Class Genetics articles Stub-Class medical genetics articles Template-Class Genetics pages Top-importance Genetics articles Unassessed-Class Genetics articles Unassessed-importance Genetics articles Unassessed medical genetics articles Unreferenced Genetics articles WikiProject Genetics WikiProject Genetics articles WikiProject Genetics participants WikiProject Medical Genetics participants WikiProject Medical genetics Wikipedians interested in genetics —Preceding unsigned comment added by Intelligent9876522 (talk • contribs) 16:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Removing Elric of Melnibone

Elric of Melniboné got bot-tagged as a genetics article. He's a fictional albino, albeit a very notable one, and the article doesn't really go into the genetic nature of his disorder. I'm removing the tag, but feel free to readd if anyone disagrees. Jclemens (talk) 23:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Monsieur Zenith too. Jclemens (talk) 23:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, it looks like everyone in Category:Fictional people with albinism got tagged. We shouldn't even have nonfictional people with albinism. How'd this happen... Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Reviewing unassessed articles & pageview stats

Now that we have a lot of unassessed Genetics articles to classify, I've put together this table of pageviews together (using cumulative pageviews from 2/01/08 to 2/23/08) so we can see relative importance: User:Madeleine_Price_Ball/Genetics_counts The table has some colors assigning "top" to the top 6.7%, "high" to the next 13.3%, "mid" to the next 26.7%, and "low" to the last 53.3%—this hasn't actually been done, it was just so I could visualize which articles were where...

Here's some articles that jump out at me as maybe shouldn't be tagged Genetics...

Asperger syndrome - there's a genetic component, but it's not a classical Mendelian inheritance. Everything about us is genetic, I think we need to limit the scope of the Genetics wikiproject to things that have a single-gene inheritance pattern.
Breast cancer - are we including all cancers? Or just this because of BRCA1 & BRCA2? Or because we say "cancer is a genetic disease"? Is Alzheimer's disease in wikiproject genetics because in some cases it is familial?
Arab,Basque people - Should we have racial/ethnic groups?
Alaskan husky,Axolotl,Boysenberry - I'm gonna throw these organisms out.
Atavism - kind of weird... not really genetics I think

Well I'm a little bored of going through it, ~~I'll leave you all to vote on these questions. Please vote and sign right below each question, try to keep it short so we can all read it.~~Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a lot of these pages were the result of an overenthusiastic bot digging into all subcategories within Category:Genetics. I've removed my questions because they seem a bit moot in light of the massive revert we'll do on this. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 01:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

One page which was tagged and untagged is PAX9. It might be worthwhile to make an explicit statement about whether you want to tag articles for individual genes (I would lean towards no, as they are mostly already in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cell Biology but I would leave the call on that to people more involved in the genetics and MCB projects). Kingdon (talk) 05:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, genes are really the subject of genetics just as much as (probably more than) they are of molecular and/or cell biology. Richard001 (talk) 07:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine with me either way. They are in Category:Genes (and its many subcategories), and the ones I randomly looked at were not (yet) tagged. Kingdon (talk)

Let's improve an important article...

Can we please improve heredity? That page is necessary, but sort of incoherent in places and a bit odd.

Lu na ke et 14:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess we need to figure out what the scope of the article should be. It looks like right now it's a history article, akin to History of genetics? This could be condensed into a history section. Maybe make this into a simpler article than genetics, with more of a focus on human heredity? What should the main sections be? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 15:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot tagging

It looks like one of the bots started tagging general virus articles (RNA virus, Double-stranded RNA viruses). I'm not sure if these should really be classified as "genetics" articles or not. What are your thoughts? Schu1321 (talk) 00:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It probably tagged things with DNA or RNA in the word? I agree these shouldn't fall into the Genetics wikiproject. Please go ahead and remove the wikiproject banner from bot-tagged articles that look questionable. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible vandalism to a Genetics related article

May 2008

Over the last month or so there have been several edits and reversions to the article Nucleotide, especially to the "Structure" section, so much so that it is difficult to determine exactly what that section should contain. It would probably be a good idea for someone with the appropriate background to have a look at the article to confirm that the current version in correct. Thanks! --Hennap (talk) 02:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know as though "vandalism" is the right term for it, but I'll do a little work on it over the next few days. If anyone would like to work on it with me, leave me a message and we can look at doing a larger re-write. Schu1321 (talk) 02:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Asperger syndrome

Asperger syndrome got tagged into this wikiproject, and I see it was already labeled as being within Medical Genetics wikiproject. (If this hadn't been the case I would have gone ahead and removed the tag without posting here.) Are we going to include all human conditions affected by genotype, or will we limit ourselves to conditions for which a significant fraction are caused by a particular mutation (ie they have a Mendelian inheritance pattern)? With all the bot tagging, we need to guard against making the coverage of this project too broad. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 22:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

And there's Tourette syndrome, although that's more strongly genetic. I think the fact that Wikiproject Medical Genetics has these actually makes it more reasonable to remove Genetics Wikiproject, because the genetics aspect has already been covered. In other words, we wouldn't go around tagging every MCB article with "Wikiproject:Biology", since MCB is more specific and already has it covered—neither should we go about tagging every Medical Genetics article with Genetics. So maybe we should leave the genetic diseases to Medical Genetics? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with that thought. They're already covered by a "genetics" wikiproject, no need to duplicate the work. If we end up running out of articles to update, then we can rethink it =) Schu1321 (talk) 03:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Although a number of specific genetic condition articles could use a thorough going over, I have found that the basic genetics articles these are based on not entirely clear - so focusing on more general articles will be more effective use of time and their quality should trickle upwards in time. LeeVJ (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

image needed

While I'm removing the Genetics wikiproject from Asperger Syndrome, I'll note that there's an image request for it: Need an image of loci implicated in autism. See, for example, Figure 1 in Abrahams & Geschwind 2008 (PMID 18414403). Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Race and intelligence article

The Race and intelligence article is in need of help with genetics, especially population genetics. --Jagz (talk) 17:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Handbook of Genetic Counseling

I found this book in Wikibooks: Handbook of Genetic Counseling. Could we use some of those articles? What do you think? NCurse _work 19:49, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Personal favor

I do a lot of article assessments for WPMED. Most of the genetic conditions are unfamiliar to me, which makes it difficult to place them on the priority-for-improvement ("importance") scale. What I've found most helpful is when the lead has a couple of words about the prevalence of a condition. So -- purely as a personal plea from me -- if you are working on an article about a medical condition and happen to know whether it is "uncommon", "rare", "very rare", or whatever else seems appropriate, could you please add a keyword or two for me? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

What are the percentages/ratios for the groupings? I removed 'rare' from the HD article after finding a link to rare being less than 5 in a 100,000, MEDMOS might need the definitions added too ? LeeVJ (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, please let us know which articles you have problems with. NCurse _work 19:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if anyone in this project is planning on doing a primary article assessment, but I can start work on some of them and help WhatamIdoing with article overlap on WPMED. Also, does anyone have any ideas or preferences for making a custom importance scale for the project? Schu1321 (talk) 20:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be perfect. It may help you. And let us know if you have any kind of problems. NCurse _work 08:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Several importance schemes have been discussed at #Getting started above; we should probably reach a consensus about them before starting any systematic assessment drives. There's a tentative consensus that medical conditions with a genetic element fall within the scope of WP:MEDGEN rather than this project, so overlap shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, MEDGEN doesn't have an importance scale, although they may be able to help you with determining the prevalence of particular medical conditions. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 13:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. I've forgotten which couple of articles prompted this note, but I'll post here (or at MEDGEN) when I run into complicated articles in the future.

LeeV, I don't actually care what standard you choose for designating the epidemiology: there are several perfectly reasonable definitions. It's just that if you can give some sort of indication about prevalence (or anything else that helps establish the context), it's really helpful to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Notability of article Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations

I have created an article Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. One editor felt it didn't meet the notability guidelines, and has since decided to let it go, but I would like to know if any others feel it should be deleted (I don't want to work on something that's just going to be deleted later on). Richard001 (talk) 10:54, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that this article is a good idea and would object to anyone who considers deleting it. I'm not entirely convinced, however, that it belongs in the Genetics Wikiproject since it appears, on face value, to be an anthropology or sociology book that merely uses genetics as one of it's explanatory tools. If you can prove that this book is indeed a genetics book, then I not only support it's existence as an article, but support it's placement in the Genetics Wikiproject as well. ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 16:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

(Eu/dy)genics is an area that relates to many different fields; I just picked genetics out as one of them. You could probably put any number of banners on there - politics, sociology, philosophy, evolutionary biology etc. The book is about dysgenics, and that certainly relates to genetics. Genetic concepts are mentioned throughout the book. Please comment on the article's talk page, as I have posted this request to many places (I should have also included as instruction of where to reply, I guess). Richard001 (talk) 05:16, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge of Dysgenesis and Dysgenics?

There is currently a dispute whether Dysgenics and Dysgenesis should be merged. I'm hoping an expert can weight in. The discussion is on the Dysgenics talk page. --Zero g (talk) 19:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

These two subjects should absolutely NOT be merged. Dysgenesis is used in medical genetics to describe abnormal development of a bodily structure. The discussion of Dysgenics has to do with a rather controversial topic related to the weakening of a population due to a variety of influences (some genetic and some cultural/social). I don't know any medical professionals who use the term "Dysgenesis" to refer to effects such as these. While there may be reasonable uses of the term in other fields, that is not a reason to merge these two disparate connotations in a page related to genetics. Medical geneticist (talk) 13:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Number of genes in human genome

How relevant is the research published by Clamp et al.[3] that shows humans have only 20,500 protein-coding genes? Do other geneticists agree with this lower number? Should the number cited in Human genome be revised? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 12:09, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely, we could mention it in the article. While I don't think the number should be revised, this new number could be added to it as an alternative number according to the latest research. NCurse _work 04:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, the current entry says 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes, which seems to encompass the most recent number. I doubt there will be a real consensus on the "true" number of protein-coding genes for quite a while. The genome sequence is still being finished and there are plenty of transcripts whose functions haven't been determined yet. Even the abstract by Clamp et al. indicates that 20,500 is an approximation and that additional protein-coding genes could be added as these predicted open reading frames are characterized.Medical geneticist (talk) 14:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 512 of the articles assigned to this project, or 19.2%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:06, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Genetics on the Main page

Genetics is today's featured article on the Main page for 12 July. Members of the WikiProject may like to keep an eye on the article for today, to counteract the inevitable increase in vandalism on the page. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 00:50, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Italicisation of genes

Although I cannot claim to have undertaken an extensive research, I have looked around and have failed so far to locate any signs that the guideline here is justified (there isn't even an example there, the only use lacking one). Are gene names really supposed to be italicised? If yes, this should be applied; if not, the guideline should change. Waltham, The Duke of 14:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The Human Gene Nomenclature Committee is a recognized authority in gene nomenclature guidelines (http://www.genenames.org/). For human gene names, the convention is to italicize and use all caps. The protein encoded by that gene is then indicated by non-italicized all caps.

Example - the Dystrophin gene (DMD), which encodes the protein Dystrophin (DMD), is mutated in patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

In mice, the italics convention is the same, but only the first letter is capitalized and the remaining letters are lower-case (http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen/gene.shtml). There are a variety of other rules for different species. Medical geneticist (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see now how we could automatize the process of changing the typo of gene names. Any idea? NCurse _work 08:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Are these gene and protein names all unique only within the same species or also across species? If their uniqueness is general, their automatic treatment by means of a script will be fairly easy. If not, then... Let's say there will be complications. Waltham, The Duke of 15:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello? (echoes) Waltham, The Duke of 21:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

You can have the same name applied to genes in different species e.g. the human gene BMAL1 and the mouse gene Bmal1. —Preceding unsigned comment added by T0mpr1c3 (talk • contribs) 14:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

As a general rule, gene nomenclature is a big mess. In some cases, there are logical gene names carried across species, but I've found that the more distantly related the species are, the harder it becomes to tell which are the real orthologs. There are certainly databases of orthologous genes, but it seems pretty difficult and possibly disruptive to try to make changes automatically. Better that interested parties check things as carefully as possible. Medical geneticist (talk) 19:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I see. Bottom line: more vigorous application of the style convention in question is needed.

One last thing. As the gene case is the only one in the guideline without an example, could someone here please add one? Waltham, The Duke of 13:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics/Assessment only shows assessed articles

Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics/Assessment isn't showing how many unassessed articles there are, an important piece of information. Perhaps the bot has put the banner on the wrong pages sometimes, but I think we should still count these; we can always delete them if the article is not related closely enough to genetics. Richard001 (talk) 09:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Humanzee

People may want to express an opinion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Humanzee.
Kww (talk) 15:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC

Editors and members of this project should be aware that Humanzee has been nominated for deletion. You may go to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Humanzee if you wish to make your views known. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 15:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Genetics

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:36, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That's probably not the best selection; someone might want to go through and remove some (are lower ranking ones available?). Richard001 (talk) 07:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There's some other relevant one's listed in the Medgen selected articles. LeeVJ (talk) 14:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Journal article

I can't seem to access the following article: Modell, B. and Kuliev, A. M. (1989) Impact of public health on human genetics. Clinical Genetics. 36: 286-298. Does anyone else (with access to this journal) have the same problem? If you can tell me how to access it or send me a copy of the article I would be grateful. Richard001 (talk) 07:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It's really strange... there seems to be a gap in page numbering between Volume 36 Issue 4 - October 1989 - (209-271), and Volume 36 Issue 5 - November 1989 - (320-404). Maybe they had a special issue that doesn't show up in the list of issues available online? Also, I did a pubmed search for the authors you mention and couldn't find it. Are you sure the spelling is correct? Do you have a PMID for that article? Medical geneticist (talk) 17:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes (from WT:MED, where I also asked). But upon rechecking my library's stock it turns out it doesn't have a hard copy at all. I would like to read the article or a similar one some time. Richard001 (talk) 07:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I found it. It appears that the issue that the paper appears in has a number of articles dealing with the relationship between genetics and public health. Maybe the Modell and Kuliev paper is a commentary or editorial that preceded the main articles and therefore didn't get digitized.

With regard to the general question of the impact of genetics on public health (whether "improved medical care is increasing the survival, and therefore the cumulative number of affected people") the article may be a bit dated. Both Medicine and Genetics have changed greatly over the past 2 decades and there are certainly counterbalancing effects that could impact the number of affected individuals. Better diagnosis and management might allow some individuals with genetic disorders to live longer and have better reproductive fitness than in previous generations. But prenatal diagnosis and other reproductive decisions may also tend to reduce the number of affected individuals, as well. You might also imagine that the effects would differ for conditions that are typically "de novo" (chromosomal aneuploidy, microdeletion syndromes, new mutations that arise due to advanced paternal age) versus those that are inherited in a dominant, recessive, or X-linked fashion. I'm pretty sure that there haven't been enough generations for these factors to make a major impact, especially in recessive conditions where the number of carriers far outweighs the number of affected individuals. It would be interesting to see a more up-to-date analysis, although I suspect it would be a difficult study to carry out. Medical geneticist (talk) 14:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a pity. We should have an article on this subject, by the way. I'm sure there have been more recent journal articles and reviews on the same topic. Richard001 (talk) 03:46, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Lampbrush chromosomes

Is Lampbrush chromosomes really not found in mammals?(check lampbrush) I wikied for it because in

"Processed Pseudogenes are more abundant in human and mouse X chrommosomes than in Autosomes, Guy Drouin, Mol. Biol. Evol. 23(9):1652-1655, 2006"

He refers to the "human and mouse" therefore mammalian lampbrush stage of these species I'm going to ask him tomorrow personally about his mammalian "lampbrush" stage...I don't have science books in English so I don't know the correct translation therefore can't find it in my books —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meghan R (talk • contribs) 23:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There is more information here that might point you in the direction of other references. This site indicates that "lampbrush chromosomes" are not observed in mammals, although I suspect that the mechanism (i.e. a change in chromatin structure to enable production of massive quantities of RNA that will be stored in the oocyte) is conserved in mammals even if the striking morphological appearance of the "lampbrush" chromosome is not observed. Medical geneticist (talk) 14:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Sex chromosome disorders

A wanted article: Sex chromosome disorders (a MeSH term). Would someone here care to create it, possibly as a disambiguation page? --Una Smith (talk) 17:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I did it. Did you have something like that in mind? Sex chromosome disorders NCurse _work 08:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Mobilome and mobile genetic element entries inconsistent

Mobilome is currently defined as "the total of all mobile genetic elements in a genome", with these being classified into (a) elements that move within the genome (suggested synonymous with transposable elements and (b) elements that move between genomes (examples given, prophages and plasmids).

Mobile genetic elements, however, are defined as "a type of DNA that can move around within the genome" - i.e., only (a) above - but transposons, plasmids and bacteriophages are all given as examples.

This is an inconsistency, but I can't correct it because I don't know which is right. The smallest change that would make it consistent is probably to change the definition of MGE to say "within or between genomes" rather than just "within the genome". Possibly the root cause of the problem is that the word genome itself is used differently in different contexts, so that what is "within" a genome by one definition is "between" genomes by another? Still, it's very confusing to a novice like myself - please someone sort it out! 81.86.145.28 (talk) 15:24, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

MGEs are simply the elements that make up the Mobilome. Modifying the definition of an MGE to include a "between genomes" clause should clear up this inconsistency. — ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 22:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Occurrence-in-subtuple problem

Can anyone here either help improve the article titled Occurrence-in-subtuple problem, or create links to it from other appropriate articles? The person who created it was around for only a short time and it is unclear whether he or she will be back. Also, I suspect the existence of counterpart articles in one or more other languages, but I don't know which ones. Mainly this results from some evidence that the person who wrote it is not a native speaker of English (although that's not as much in evidence in the most recent version as in earlier ones). At any rate, if it exists in some other language, there should be interwiki links between the two articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Berber people: Genetics

There has always been a very long discussion of the genetics of Berber people in this article. Since 6 December 2008, there appears to be a huge duplication of material on Berber genetics under Genetic evidence and under Influence on Europe. The duplication extends even to identical subsection headings in these two sections. Could someone knowledgeable from WikiProject Genetics please have a look at the material in these two sections and make an expert judgment? Thank you in advance. --Zlerman (talk) 05:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge progeny testing into animal breeding

Please contribute to this discussion. Regards—G716 <^T·_C> 20:10, 27 December 2008 (UTC)