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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

Thankyou from Letthesunshinein333

I really like this; It helped me a lot with my homework. Thank you so much! I will keep using this and expect more coming! Thanks, Let the sunshine in333 (talk) 02:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Human genetic variation article

The Human genetic variation article needs help. There is also a current Request for Comment on the article.[1]. --Oost (talk) 16:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Breeding back

Breeding back appears to describe a special case of breeding back to the parental strains of a hybrid cross. I cannot find a Wikipedia article on breeding back in the more general sense. Would anyone here care to take a look at this? --Una Smith (talk) 04:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Xasodfuih (talk) 14:40, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Compound heterozygosity

This article is a stub, and rather colloquially written. Could someone take a look and judge whether the content's accurate and true (and better still, maybe add a ref)? Gonzonoir (talk) 14:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Articles nominated for deletion

These articles have been nominated for deletion. Uncle G (talk) 05:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Beard

In the article Beard I got a very good understanding of cultural aspects in connection with beards. However, there is a lack of biological aspects, i.e. why and how is a beard growing?, do all human races have a beard?, what are the physiological reasons to let beards grow?, is there treatment, if no beards grows? Could you please add such aspects? 85.178.44.22 (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Medicine collaboration of the week covering a related article

Huntington's Disease has been selected as the WP:MCOTW, and with pointers from a recent GA review, feel free to join in the fun! On another note I see it isn't tagged for the genetics project directly, are we leaving actual disorder pages to WP:MEDGEN or is it an oversight? LeeVJ (talk) 10:59, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

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Thanks. — Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:11, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

A couple of articles I just tagged as needing expert attention - can you help?

Both articles are in need of a good rewriting/expanding to use clearer, more general language by someone who knows what they're talking about in this area (i.e. not me!). Both (but particularly the latter) could do with referencing from reliable sources too. Just a heads-up if anyone here is interested. Thanks. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Phenotypic plasticity

Hi, I've been updating this page today and would like someone to have a quick look to check I haven't said anything stupid. Also I've created a little bit of a plant bias - not sure if this is me or because it's the case with this topic. Searching "animal phenotypic plasticity" only brings up plant/animal comparisons! Thanks Smartse (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

plant dna

There are three types of plant DNA! What are they? Is this one of them? mitochondrial? Or normal DNA or was it normal nuclear DNA? What was the last one? Emi626 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Plants have DNA in the cell nucleus, like all eukaryotes. They also have mitochondria which contain small circular DNA molecules and chloroplasts which contain DNA molecules (not sure if they're also circular)... so yes, they have three types of DNA. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 22:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Gene library

The current Gene library article deals entirely with genomic libraries. I think that the term "Genomic library" is more commonly used, and has the advantage of being less ambiguous; "gene library" could arguably include cDNA libraries. I've put a proposal on the Gene library talk page to move that article to Genomic library (which presently redirects to gene library), then make a short general intro to libraries under "Gene library" (or, perhaps better, "Library (genetics)") that would include links to both "Genomic library" and "cDNA library". I'd appreciate some comment and suggestions. Agathman (talk) 13:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

How about "DNA library" as the main article, with subsections for cDNA and genomic libraries? Sometimes libraries don't even contain "genes" per se but fragments from any sort of cloning. I'll comment on the Gene library page. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 16:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Chromosome speciation

I have been trying to find out why different species have different numbers of chromosomes, and the relationship between chromosome numbers and speciation events. Humans have 46 chromosomes, whereas chimpanzees and gorillas have 48 chromosomes. Some of the canids also have different chromosome numbers (see Canid_hybrid#Genetic_considerations). What would be useful to know, is when the number of chromosomes is increased or decreased in a specific individual, how would the individual be able to successfully reproduce, being that the affected individual will have more or less chromosomes than its sexual counterpart. Wapondaponda (talk) 23:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

People carrying a Robertsonian translocation only have 45 chromosomes but they can reproduce (though they do have a higher rate of miscarriages and/or offspring with abnormalities). See also human chromosome 2, which is thought to be an end-to-end fusion (a form of balanced translocation) of two different chromosomes that are found in primates. One would theorize that this translocation existed in early predecessors of humans, who passed it along at a certain frequency, and that perhaps a population bottleneck or other similar founder effect resulted in an increase in frequency of the translocation among members of a certain isolated population, who then underwent speciation and became distinct from their counterparts. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 01:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Medical geneticist for the information. I looked up Robertsonian translocation and I was able to find the article on Chromosomal polymorphism. The article had some interesting information, that a species can exist with members that have varying chromosome counts. However polymorphism is a significant step towards speciation, especially if translocation occurs in other members. Both would be able to interbreed with the parent population but not with each other. So does this mean that gametes can still recognize their homologues if chromosome fusion has taken place. Wapondaponda (talk) 04:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Blood type GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Blood type for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 23:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Drosophila melanogaster up for GA reassessment

Drosophila melanogaster has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Wizardman 02:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Renaming and reorganization of Gene stubs

I've put up a proposal for the Gene stubs category and stubs to be reorganized and renamed. Please read more here. — Skittleys (talk) 00:49, 23 August 2009 (UTC)


Gene and Protein, which is which

Most of the pages on genes for proteins, are one with the page on the protein. Several of the pages incorrectly state that the "protein" is the human gene. This is ambiguous and misleading. I was informed by AndrewGNF that there was a consensus on this project to keep both the gene and the protein on the same Wikipedia page. Especially In the cases where the amount of information on the protein and the gene are substantial, there should be a disambiguation of the two, per the guidelines of Wikipedia. Also, for lay persons who may not be as aware of the differentiation of the gene and protein in the content put forth, it would provide greater clarity.

As such, Syntaxins are already separated this way by a prior editor, and I have started to work on the information regarding Synapsin I & II and plan to do Synapsin II as well. There is a considerable amount of information on these phosphoproteins that should be expounded upon.

Update: This is a point of disambiguation. Regardless of the opening sentence, the Wikipedia guidelines call for the separation of the two topics, as they are clearly two distinctly different entities. On many of the proteins, there is a considerable amount of information that could be provided. The 3D rendered protein image on the page is misleading to those not familiar with the content, and should be shown on a separate protein page. A link to or image/diagram relevant to the genetic sequence data for the gene should be provided instead.

— User:Synapsin [[User talk:Synapsin[talk]] 06:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot of points which you declare definite, but all guidelines on wikipedia are general and may not be the best option for all articles, so consensus is the key. True it can become confusing if the article is ambiguous, but often discussing the gene and protein in the same article is helpful, and certainly reduces the number of stubs and articles to keep track of! I don't know if anyone else would object, but if there is enough information to warrant separate articles then fine, but my preference would be to keep them together until that point and improve the prose of these articles to eliminate ambiguities. L∴V 19:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
There are probably certain protein families that lend themselves well to the "grouping" type of approach where it makes sense to have a general discussion of their function and each different member of the family can then be described in more detail on individual gene pages. This approach seems to work well for syntaxins as you point out. I could think of a whole lot of different protein families that are organized in a similar way (actin, myosin, dynein, kinesin, integrin, dynamin, just to give cytoskeletal exmaples). This method could also apply to proteins conserved across different organisms and then listing/linking out to organism-specific gene pages. But, as Lee points out, there's no single best option for all articles. There are certainly other venues for collective gene annotation, so I'm not even convinced that Wikipedia needs to be a repository for information on all known genes (is a gene or protein necessarily notable?). --- Medical geneticist (talk) 02:36, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you help at Genetic history of the British Isles?

Some expert input would be greatly appreciated here. Thanks. Pondle (talk) 09:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Outcrossing

There is a lot of info in Outcrossing which seems dubious to me. Can someone take a look. --Dodo bird (talk) 06:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


talk:The Races of Europe

I would be grateful if a knowledgable editor could respond to the comments of User:Ledboots. I want to avoid an edit war over his OR additions to the article (which, BTW, could do with being improved). Paul B (talk) 16:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Illness among Jews

Possible merge? Opinions here please. Tim Vickers (talk) 02:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge?

Hello! Should Virtual Karyotype be merged with Array comparative genomic hybridization. I'm not an expert, or in fact know anything about it, I just thought you were the guys to do it *hums the A team theme tune under breath*. Thanks! Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 16:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

My personal bias is the use the "array-CGH" terminology since this describes what is actually being done. "Virtual karyotype" or "molecular karyotype" are buzz words that have been used in a few articles but are by no means the standard terminology. I would be in favor of merging all of the articles (Virtual Karyotype, SNP array, and copy number analysis) into the Array comparative genomic hybridization article as there really isn't any difference between the terms and the end result would be a better article. There are some nuances with regard to different capabilities of different platforms, but the applications are largely the same. Unfortunately, the array-CGH article is in somewhat bad shape, while the virtual karyotype article seems to focus on cancer-related applications. Neither article mentions the fact that there are limitations to the technology (such as inability to detect balanced translocations, inversions, or the physical location of duplicated material). --- Medical geneticist (talk) 18:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your reply, unfortunately my knowledge in this field is slim/none so can't personally do anything really. Is there anyone/a few people out there willing to collaborate on bringing these articles up to scratch? Keep the ideas coming though! Thank you very very much in advance, best regards, Captain n00dle T/C 12:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC) (p.s. if you are celebrating it, happy thanksgiving.)

SNP genotyping

The explanation of the TGGE Method in the overview article SNP genotyping seems rather wrong. They talk about a melting and reanealling step before the actual gel electrophoresis. That would be "Heteroduplex analysis" such as DHPLC, wouldn't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Padder333 (talk • contribs) 17:45, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


it states that SNPs are the most common type of genetic variation but structural variation in terms of total nucleotide bases is more common than SNPs, right?? should we change this? Findingdan (talk) 20:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Conditional gene knockout

The information on the "conditional gene knockout" page is incomplete. Shouldn't conditional also have a time component? Is there any specialist to confirm and to adjust the subject? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pstragier (talk • contribs) 11:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

John D. Hawks AfD

Would like your help and comments on the article and/or AfD. The AfD is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John D. Hawks. --JWB (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Morpholino GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Morpholino for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article and help it maintain its GA status. Please comment there to help resolve the raised issues. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Genetic code

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as this project's banner is on the article talk page. I have found a number of concerns which you can see at Talk:Genetic code/GA1. I have de-listed the article as the referencing is so poor. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at WP:GAR. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:00, 26 February 2010 (UTC) On hold for seven days at the request of User:Boghog2. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Prion

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as this project's banner is on the article talk page. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Prion/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Old merge proposal

Hello there peeps, I'm tidying up at Category:Articles to be merged from November 2007 and I've found an argument about Common gamma chain and IL2RG. This is too technical for me to assess (O level biology was a looooong time ago, even though I passed the exam it was more about setting fire to a peanut than analysing the human genome), could someone here sort it out? Thanks. Totnesmartin (talk) 14:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like this is another example of the question above ("Separate Gene from Protein?"). I'm not sure this has been definitively addressed but is probably something that should be dealt with at a higher level rather than case-by-case. Gene and protein nomenclature is unfortunately inconsistent and confusing. The function of a given protein may be the same or very similar across numerous species, even if though the names and versions of the gene/protein found in those species is non-identical. The Common gamma chain article deals with the protein and its general functions across different species, while the IL2RG article specifically talks about this being a "human gene" and gives details about the precise location in the human genome and a human genetic disorder. What about the mouse gene, chimp gene, dog gene, etc? Do we need to have a separate article for every species that has an ortholog of that gene? (I would argue NO, there are other sources of information like this). As with any other article, one needs to ask about the noteworthiness of the topic. One can argue that the IL2RG gene is noteworthy because mutations of that gene cause a human disease (X-linked_severe_combined_immunodeficiency), although that's not necessarily the only criterion for a gene's significance. In summary, my $0.02 is to just leave them as is for now. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
OK then, I'll remove the tags, especially as, as you say, IL2RG causes a human genetic disorder. A list in the relevant article of the gene's function in various species would be good. Totnesmartin (talk) 19:54, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
There was a long discussion here about the scope of Gene Wiki articles such as IL2RG. The general consensus reached at that time is that articles like IL2RG are about both the protein and the gene that encodes it. Furthermore, the scope of these articles is not meant to be restricted humans (the protein infobox also contains data about the mouse ortholog as well as a HomoloGene link to orthologs in other species). I have modified the lead sentence to make clearer the intended scope of the article (human protein + human gene + orthologs in other species). Given the intended scope of the IL2RG article, I think the common gamma chain article should be merged into the IL2RG article. Discussion of genetic diseases resulting from IL2RG mutations can happily be included in a "clinical significance" in the merged article. Boghog (talk) 21:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Seeking input at FAC for 'Homologous recombination'

The FAC nomination for Homologous recombination has been up for about a week and a half, and is in need of further review. As it is a major mechanism of DNA repair and genetic diversification, the subject is one of WikiProject Genetics's "High Importance" articles. Any input would be greatly appreciated! Emw (talk) 00:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Medicine Collaboration of the Month

Craig Hicks (talk) 18:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

The Arbitration Commmittee case on race and intelligence has just been decided. Thus articles that are either in the Race and intelligence controversy category or mentioned in the findings of the 2010 Arbitration Committee case on Race and intelligence or closely related to those are subject to active arbitration remedies that you may wish to review. The case decision seems to have resulted in an immediate improvement in the editing environment of several articles that previously were very contentious. Peaceful, collaborative editing that turns to sources and upholds Wikipedia policy is enjoyable editing. I thought I should let participants on this WikiProject know that this improved atmosphere now exists, because some of the articles related to that case have long been marked as part of this project. Your participation in editing those articles is welcomed and encouraged. You can look up sources to help improve articles in the source lists I have been compiling to share with all Wikipedians. And because the source lists span several different topics, and those topics fit quite a few articles in this WikiProject in whole or in part, suggesting new sources would be a very kind thing to do. The atmosphere has improved a lot, so the articles can improve a lot. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Genetics articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Genetics articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

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For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

  • {{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Research survey invitation

My apologies if this solicitation goes beyond the scope of your WikiProject talk page. I am a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University doing some research into editing and reverts on Wikipedia. I am looking for editors who have done some editing to genetics articles on Wikipedia in the past as participants for a short survey. The survey will take about 10-15 minutes, and will help me model what sorts of things are reverted on Wikipedia so that I can develop interfaces and tools for newcomers and administrators. If you would like to participate, please complete the survey on SurveyMonkey here. You can find out more about me on my user page, and I'm more than happy to talk more about this research on my talk page. Thank you so much for your time. JeffRz (talk) 20:03, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

More opinions requested at Talk:Cystic_fibrosis

We're discussing suitable and unsuitable images for the lead infobox of Cystic fibrosis, and more opinions and ideas would be very welcome. The conversation is ongoing at Talk:Cystic_fibrosis#Image_in_lead. Badger Drink (talk) 03:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Naming discussion regarding Korean ethnicity article

Readers of this page may be interested in a discussion at Talk:Pure blood theory in Korea#Requested move. Cheers. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:04, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

HY box

Could someone vet the article HY box for accuracy? It has been created by a user which seems to have created a large number of articles by incoherently copying and pasting sentences from journal papers. Cheers, —Ruud 11:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Note: this article was created almost entirely by copying from other wikipedia articles without attribution and copying sentences from article abstracts. I have attempted to remove the offending material but the article essentially needs recreating with original text Jebus989✰ 12:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not even sure this article meets notability criteria. It is basically about a transcription factor binding site that occurs in one gene, studied by one group and reported in a single paper. I would recommend deletion. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 00:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Genome-wide association studies

I nominated the Genome-wide association study article for collaboration of the month. I put in a lot of work already, and I think it just needs a little bit more to get it really nice. Second-opinions and the like. I think it could have what it takes to become a featured article, and it would be nice to see such about some modern relevant science, in contrast to the usual movie characters and historical battlefields. Go there and vote - or better yet, just go to the article and help me :-) --LasseFolkersen (talk) 22:10, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - MART-1

Should this page (MART-1) merge to MLANA? Please comment at Talk:MART-1. Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:27, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done – Thanks for the heads up. These two articles are obviously about the same gene/protein. Therefore I have been WP:BOLD and completed the merger. Boghog (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment

I am involved in a content discussion on Talk:Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory#Mutual Misunderstings? with a gentleman identifying himself as the senior science writer for that facility, regarding the nature of relationship of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to the Eugenics Record Office. I invite any disinterested by knowledgeable editors to review the discussion and weigh in. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 20:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

DNA Tribes

Having noticed 69.142.42.133 (talk · contribs) removing sourced text and adding material from DNA tribes at various articles I took a look at our article DNA Tribes which reads almost like a brochure from the company, possibly because there is some clear copyvio, eg searching for a short excerpt turns up [2]. 06:00, 4 June 2012 (UTC) Dougweller (talk)

Now deleted by AfD. Dougweller (talk) 05:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Move requested

I'd like to see Haplodiploid sex-determination system moved to Haplodiploidy over the redirect. It's so much simpler. Needs an admin. Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Barbara McClintock for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 16:39, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Sequenced genomes category

This category is proposed for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_February_13#Category:Sequenced_genomes. DexDor (talk) 06:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/c10orf76

This new article is up for review in the Afc: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/c10orf76. It could use an expert opinion. —Anne Delong (talk) 08:22, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alpha-1B-glycoprotein

...and here's another: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alpha-1B-glycoprotein. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Another submission coming your way

AfC: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/GeneTalk. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:34, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Retina and Anterior Neural Fold Homeobox

Expert opinions needed reading the notability of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Retina and Anterior Neural Fold Homeobox and whether the submission is ready to be moved into the main encyclopedia. Please use {{afc comment|1=Your comment here.}} to leave a comment. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done Retinal homeobox protein Rx expanded and moved to main space. Boghog (talk) 05:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

AfC submission

This is an interesting submission. Care to review it? Thanks, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

"Abraham modal haplotype"

Hey all

I just saw the article Abraham modal haplotype when browsing around. The sourcing seems to consist of four works, two by the self-proclaimed discoverer of the haplotype, one I can't see, and one that is only available in "snippet" form and doesn't seem to use "Abraham modal haplotype" in those precise words. Would anyone be able and willing to hunt for sources in academic databases and let me know the likelihood of this article being, well, a crock? Thanks! Ironholds (talk) 04:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

There are zero results for this term on both Pubmed and Google Scholar. That alone is enough to make me seriously question the article. Given the current sources and the lack of other mentions of the term, it's probably original research. My opinion is that it's a fork of the contested genetic content being debated in some Jewish articles, particularly Ashkenazi Jews. Sarahj2107 (talk) 12:01, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the assist! I've nominated it for deletion here (you should've received a ping) - feel free to chip in. Ironholds (talk) 10:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mohammad Hassan Kariminejad

Dear genetics experts: The above article will soon be deleted as an abandoned stale draft. If the information in the article is correct, is this a notable academic? Are there sources to support this? —Anne Delong (talk) 19:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Please improve heteroplasmy

  • How does it arise?
  • Does it eventually peters out to homoplasmy and how fast?

Help from geneticists is much appreciated. --CopperKettle 09:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Pls add to your watch list!!

I have recently created an article called Indigenous Amerindian genetics....What i am requesting is someone familiar with the topic to take a look at the article and Copy edit were need be... !!!..O YES!!! pls add article to your watch list! ...Buzzzsherman (talk) 03:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Dyad

Hi, dyad is currently tagged for a possible merge to Chromatid. I think it should be merged but I really haven't the knowledge to give a valued opinion. Could someone a look ? thanks. Mattg82 (talk) 20:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The number of links to single nucleotide polymorphism, which redirects to single-nucleotide polymorphism, appears to suggest merely another case of how many people today fail to appreciate the utility of the more traditional way of using hyphens, which is still dominant in newpapers, magazines, and books not written by professors in scientific fields. I can well imagine some people saying that it is silly to think anyone might see "single nucleotide polymorphism" and think that it means just one—a single one—of those things called "nucleotide polymorphisms". (Of course, the hyphen resolves that ambiguity.) I invite anyone tempted to say that to think before they speak. In the first place, some intelligent people are unfamiliar with this particular field and might indeed think that. In the second place, notice that the same objection could be applied to many cases of omitting a question mark at the end of a question. But good habits—using the hyphen or the question mark when it is applicable—result in those habits being applied generally, not just to this one particular phrase but to all where they are appropriate. And there are numerous ambiguities that can be resolved in this marvelously efficient way. (Some of the redirects to single-nucleotide polymorphism are perfectly inoffensive, such as the plural single-nucleotide polymorphisms, with a proper hyphen—perfectly printable.)

So: If everyone here fixes two or three links to the unhyphenated phrase every day—just by adding the hyphen—then the problem will soon be gone. (And while we're at it, we can fix things like Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, with incorrect capitals, and Single-nucleotide polymorphism (some people seem to feel that the initial letter of a link should be capital even when it's just a common noun in the middle of a sentence). Michael Hardy (talk) 02:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

RNA polymerase II

Main article: RNA polymerase II
See also: RNA polymerase II holoenzyme

I have been adding material to these pages and would like to revise them. I believe having both of these pages is a good idea. RNA polymerase II contained very little text on the polymerase and a lot on transcription. I would like to move the transcription portion, except for a brief review since RNAP2 is involved, to the holoenzyme page. But, I'd like some input before I do this. The holoenzyme is the transcription enzyme, whereas RNAP2 is the crucial part that cannot interact with DNA until the holoenzyme has been assembled. Since the image of POLR2 comes from USA NIH, as indicated in the link, pictures showing the locations of each of the different subunits can be downloaded to wikimedia and added to the text. Please take a look at what I've added so far and provide some feedback or criticism. Thanks. Marshallsumter (talk) 17:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Separate gene from protein?

I suggest we do not write separate articles for proteins and their genes, at least not when there is a 1-1 correspondence and there is not too much text. I came across this phenomenon in the case of Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, the protein, and CFTR (gene). In this case most of the info about the gene is also in the article about the protein. Are there any other views on this? --Ettrig (talk) 17:59, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems to make things easier - e.g. huntingtin - for some views pertaining to its merge see Talk:Huntingtin#Merge_proposal. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Missing genetics topics

I've updated my list of missing genetics topics - 88.115.203.231 (talk) 13:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

MTHFD1L

The subject gene (GeneID: 25902) is newly implicated (http://www.physorg.com/news190461684.html points to Pericak-Vance M et al. in the upcoming Neurology 2010 Apr 20) in late-onset Alzheimer's disease. There's an existing article for MTHFD1, but nothing for the gene, a.k.a. FLJ21145; FTHFSDC1; MTC1THFS; dJ292B18.2; RP1-292B18.2; DKFZp586G1517. It appears to be an SNP that links to high homocysteine levels. Can we get ahead of the game with at least a stub on this one, please? User:LeadSongDog come howl 16:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Stub created. Please note that the MTHFD1 article is about both the gene and the enzyme encoded by that gene. MTHFD1L is a different gene that encodes a different enzyme. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:14, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

There is unclear MT-RNR2 for me:

Should be 16S rRNA disambiguation page? --Snek01 (talk) 16:12, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I suspect these should be merged. MT-RNR1 and MT-RNR2 are each only 1.5 sentences long. --Paul (talk) 08:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Do you mean to merge MT-RNR1 with MT-RNR2 into one article of what name or 12S ribosomal RNA with MT-RNR1 or 16S ribosomal RNA with MT-RNR2? Maybe some of them can be merged if they are completely the same thing. Possible article names could be Prokaryotic 16S ribosomal RNA and Eucaryotic 16S ribosomal RNA if they are different. But I have not enough knowledge on this and maybe even my questions can be misleading. --Snek01 (talk) 19:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
MT-RNR1 and MT-RNR2 are two adjacent but non-overlapping genes. In addition, the MT-RNR2 gene appears to encode the humanin polypeptide whereas MT-RNR1 appears to be non-coding. Finally mutations in each of the two genes have been associated with quite distinct pathologies. Hence I think these two articles should probably be kept separate. Boghog (talk) 20:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of turning 16S rRNA into a disambiguation page. I have also changed the 12S rRNA redirect to point to MT-RNR1. In summary:
* 12S rRNA → MT-RNR1 (Mitochondrially encoded 12S RNA)
* 16S rRNA → 16S ribosomal RNA (prokaryotic) or MT-RNR2 (Mitochondrially encoded 16S RNA, eukaryotic)
I hope this is OK. Boghog (talk) 21:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Somaclonal variation

Should this article be included in the WikiProject somewhere? I wasn't sure of the category as I'm not an expert on genetics. I went to the article for info and found that it is in need of attention. Some of it looks as if it could be copied from a book. Stainless steel cat (talk) 20:25, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Nearly all the content of that article was added in June 2009 in this edit by Botany Master Pak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Several signs point toward this being a potential copyright problem:
  • A contributor's first edit was to add a very large amount of well-written but unwikified text
  • The text refers to, for example, "(William et al., 1990)" but does not provide the corresponding full citation
  • Unusual characters such as the bullet symbol (•) are used
  • One paragraph reads, in full, "Illustration of the principle of AFLP"
  • The edit provides one true reference to "Methods in plant tissue culture (second edition 2002) by U. Kumar". The content provided in the edit – which includes details of methods and an argued conclusion – resembles content from a textbook and is most likely either copied outright from or else based far too closely on that reference.
Accordingly I've restored the article to the version immediately before that edit.
Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Good catch. It's ripped from here. LeadSongDog come howl! 01:46, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. The edit had contained a few typos, which had made me hesitant to revert – but seeing the source, it looks like BMK must have introduced them while typing. Pity about the wasted effort, not to mention the two dozen edits that followed... Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 10:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

GeneId or Entrez_Gene template?

Searching finds 9,787 for http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene and 10,099 for GeneID

List of human ATPase genes seems to be an example where pairs of GeneID values with the EntrezGene link are listed eg 

Catalytic core (F1 - Fraction 1)

* alpha subunit:
ATP5A1 GeneID: 498<ref>{{cite web 
       | title = Entrez Gene: ATP5A1 ATP synthase, H+ transporting, mitochondrial F1 complex, alpha subunit 1, cardiac muscle
       | url = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=498}}</ref>
ATPAF2 GeneID: 91467<ref>{{cite web
        | title = Entrez Gene: ATPAF2 ATP synthase mitochondrial F1 complex assembly factor 2
        | url = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=91467}}</ref>.

* beta subunit:
ATP5B GeneID: 506<ref>{{cite web 
         | title = Entrez Gene: ATP5B ATP synthase, H+ transporting, mitochondrial F1 complex, beta polypeptide
         | url = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=506}}</ref>
ATPAF1 GeneID: 64756<ref>{{cite web
         | title = Entrez Gene: ATPAF1 ATP synthase mitochondrial F1 complex assembly factor 1
         | url = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=64756}}</ref>
...

Since the GeneID appears to be the TermToSearch value in Db=Gene or the equivalent? short form, should there be a template or template family like the Template:OMIM set for providing Entrez Gene links? Note that the OMIM templates have recently been changed to an /omim/#### URL form

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=515 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/515

ATP5F1 ATP synthase, H+ transporting, mitochondrial F0 complex, subunit B1 Homo sapiens GeneID: 515

Worth considering? RDBrown (talk) 15:06, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

In this particular case, Wikipedia articles about these specific gene/proteins, ATP5A1, ATP5B and ATPAF1, and ATPAF2 already exist. These articles in turn contain infoboxes that link to the external Entrez Gene database. Hence rather than inserting footnotes with the Entrez Gene, it would be much cleaner to link to the corresponding Wikipedia article. If there are missing gene articles that you would like created, please list them here. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 16:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
As you have done, thanks. I finally found Template:EntrezGene too, though it just shows EntrezGene and the number. I guess that most of the EntrezGene links are coming from Template:GNF Protein box HGNCid and MGIid parameters or the equivalent Gene info box. My question is whether the short URLs above should be used for such links given the OMIM change to use a short form? NCBI Creating a Web Link to the Entrez Databases describes the short form only for pubmed DB entries, but perhaps that documentation is out of date (Last Update: October 21, 2009). Check that the short URL form http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/515 is acceptable/preferred by the NCBI?

My pubmed search for articles with explicit long form pubmed URLs found the following genes which are marked as orphan articles and are only in the Human Proteins category. Are there additional categories that suit these open reading frame genes? C16orf42 C16orf58 C16orf84 C7orf30 C7orf67 Hope this is useful – I have no domain knowledge. RDBrown (talk) 14:09, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Please offer an opinion on whether the following external links would be helpful:

The links were added by a new editor (User:Brenleymcintosh), and were removed by User:Fæ with edit summary "Open wikis fail WP:ELNO". A very polite discussion followed at User talk:Brenleymcintosh, and WP:ELN#Clarification for EcoliWiki links, and my talk page, where I agreed to raise this issue for the user. The open wiki may be acceptable as an external link because it appears to be stable and to have a sufficient number of editors. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 01:10, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Just had a quick look and I am against linking to particular pages within the wiki. I feel that it would be alright to link to the home page from the E. coli article, but it should first be brought up on the talk page AIRcorn (talk) 02:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
I see a discussion has started already about E. coli wiki there. AIRcorn (talk) 03:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC) Nevermind, I now see the link is already there under databases AIRcorn (talk) 03:03, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Gene bank vs. Genomic library

What is the difference between a gene bank and a genomic library? I wanted to clean up the langlinks but got lost in contradictions between the different language wikis. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Genomic libraries aren't used for conserving organisms, but for things related to DNA sequencing, as a technical step.Narayanese (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Is anyone watching the Lewontin's Fallacy article?

I see that there is an article Lewontin's_Fallacy that treats quite a few issues in genetics, but it doesn't have a talk page template yet linking it to this project. That page may need some expert attention, so I thought I would mention it here. Anyone with expertise who looks that article over would be doing Wikipedia readers a favor. Thanks for your help. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:11, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Conserved genes?

Hi everyone,

I see the following phrases in lots of articles: http://www.google.ca/#q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+%22conserved+gene%22

  • 16S ribosomal RNA: The 16SrRNA gene is used for phylogenetic studies as it is highly conserved between different species of bacteria and archaea
  • CD90: Thy-1 has been conserved throughout vertebrate evolution and even in some invertebrates, with homologs described in many species
  • Bestrophin 1: The bestrophin genes share a conserved gene structure, with almost identical sizes of the 8 RFP-TM domain-encoding exons and highly conserved exon-intron boundaries
  • Edward M. De Robertis: This use of conserved gene networks during embryonic development has channeled the outcomes of evolution by Natural Selection
  • EHD1: This gene belongs to a highly conserved gene family encoding EPS15 homology (EH) domain-containing proteins.
  • Avian paramyxovirus: The viral genes are flanked by highly conserved gene-start (GS) and gene-end (GE) transcription signals
  • PES1: It is a strongly conserved gene containing a BRCT domain that is essential for the activity of this gene product.
  • PABPC1: In humans, the PABPs comprise a small nuclear isoform and a conserved gene family

I have the following questions/proposals:

  1. What do geneticists mean by "conserved gene"?
  2. Should I ask these questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Evolutionary biology instead?
  3. If this is something well known by geneticists, but unknown by the population at large, it might be a good topic for an article. Wikilinks could then be added into articles that talk about "highly conserved genes" and "conserved gene families".
  4. Is this covered by conserved sequence?

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 06:54, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Good point. A conserved sequence implies that there is a conserved gene. Hence this concept is already implicitly covered in the conserved sequence article. I have just added an explicit definition in this edit and created a conserved gene redirect that points to conserved sequence. Boghog (talk) 08:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Your Suggestions Sought for Intelligence Citations Bibliography

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I am also in the beginning stages of compiling a source list on anthropology, human biology, and race, including all related areas of genetics, and I'd love to hear your suggestions about that. I'm enjoying reading some current books about genetics from my favorite university library, but you could surely recommend others, which I will be glad to type into full citation form for other Wikipedians to use as references for articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Feel free to make use of the sources listed in these source lists and to suggest additional sources that you know about. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

"Big gene" ?

A new editor contributed big gene recently, and I'm a little dubious about whether this is really a specific named concept. Google isn't very helpful (even after filtering out all the references to people nicknamed 'Big Gene'), because 'big' is such a common adjective. There's a "BIG gene" which codes for "the BIG protein, a calossin-like protein in Arabidopsis", but that's absolutely not the same thing.

And this is really not my field. Opinions, anyone? DS (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks like a good faith effort but I would support merging the content into the gene article under a new section discussing gene size. To me, the term "big gene" isn't really a formal definition, more of a loose description. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
This is an odd article. Perhaps it would be better to transform it into a list (similar to List of largest buildings in the world or List of biggest islands). The biggest protein (at least in humans) is titin. Boghog (talk) 15:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
I suggest that the article's author, 11208201xiaoqianru (talk · contribs), is in a university class where a required assignment is to create Wikipedia articles.--Kevinkor2 (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
11208201xiaoqianru has created the following articles:
As support for this suggestion, a user with a similar name, 11208202yaobei (talk · contribs), has created two articles in with a genetics theme:
If this is the case, I wish they were listed on the Wikipedia:School and university projects page. However, I had difficulty finding that page myself and I *knew* that it existed.
--Kevinkor2 (talk) 00:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Yikes, there's definitely good faith but some of these need to be merged/redirected into already existing articles. I've already left a message at Talk:Karyotype_analysis. The structural variation article could be merged/redirected to either copy number variation or simply chromosome abnormality. Any wiki-savvy editor able make those moves? --- Medical geneticist (talk) 01:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Nonhuman gene/protein template

There are a number of articles concerning gene/proteins where there is no human ortholog. Some of these articles transclude the {{infobox protein}} template. This is less than ideal since many of the external links are to human databases (e.g., HGNCid and OMIM) whereas others are "hard wired" to human data (e.g., RefSeq and Chromosome). In order to overcome this limitation, I created a new {{infobox nonhuman protein}} template in which the RefSeq and Chromosome link now should work with any species. In addition, two additional parameters, organism and TaxID have been added so that the species may be specified. An example of the template in use may be found in a recently created uterine serpin article. Comments and suggestion for improving the {{infobox nonhuman protein}} template are welcome.

I also wanted to acknowledge new MCB WikiProject member User:Ufpete for the great job he did in creating the uterine serpin article! Boghog (talk) 07:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Need a second look at

We have a bunch of edits that have completely changed the page Recent African origin of modern humans, Was going to mass revert as its clear that the edits were done to support multiregional origin of modern humans. The whole page has been converted to this theory. Statements after statement have been added to dismiss this pages concept. Ref added for this purpose are old or misunderstood. Before i revert would like a second opinion. Moxy (talk) 16:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

This is way out of my field, but the "multiregional origin of modern humans" may be a significant minority view. It is unacceptable to replace a majority with minority view so I agree with you that these edits should be reverted. However as long as the minority view is backup by reliable sources, it would be appropriate to mention the minority view as long as it is not given undue weight. Boghog (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Moxy's characterization of my edits is inaccurate. My edits were actually quite limited, made specifically to (1) fix a very clumsily worded description of multiregional evolution in the lead of the recent African origins page, (2) introduce a source or two to provide a more balanced view of the analysis of autosomal evidence since 2000, and (3) introduce material on 2010 analyses of neanderthal and denisovan DNA. Over 90% of the page was untouched, including the first 80% or so of the lead. In particular, far from "replacing" the view of the article, I left the opening of the article, which portrays the recent African origins theory as "the" mainstream view, alone. My edits were in no way "conversion" of the "whole page"; it was simply introduction of some relevant new facts. Warren Dew (talk) 19:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

AAAS and Wikipedian biologists

Fellow Wikipedians, I've recently been speaking with a (responsible) New York based journalist who is working on a story on the people and motivations behind the biological content on Wikipedia. She is attending the upcoming American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting and was wondering whether any Wikipedians were going. If you are, she would like to meet with you. Leave me a message or email me and I can put you in touch with her. Her request is as follows:

“I’m a journalist with The Scientist magazine and I’m writing an article about the creators of Wikipedia pages on basic biology. I’m planning on attending the AAAS meeting in Washington DC in February 17-21st [3], and am looking to meet up with Wikipedia writers and editors. I’d like to get a group together and get a better sense of the culture of contributors that write and polish these entries. Alternately, if you know of a different upcoming meeting of life science-Wiki-writers/editors on the east coast, let me know.”

Rockpocket 10:24, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Susie the orangutan

Susie the orangutan has apparently had her entire genome sequenced (apologies if I have misused technical vocabulary), and the announcement that a third species has been afforded this degree of investigation has been posted to the Main Page in the In The News section. The problem is, the article cited omits to let us know whether Susie is/was Pongo pygmaeus or Pongo abelii, thus leaving our main page with the clearly inaccurate claim The orangutan becomes the third hominid species to have .... Anyone know more of Susie? (answers to WP:ERRORS would generate the most rapid chance of correcting the main page.) Kevin McE (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

According to the original publication, Susie is a Pongo abelii (Sumatran) orangutan. I don't think the "In the news" hook is in error, but I would agree that it is not as specific as it could be. Boghog (talk) 20:13, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Saying that the orangutan is a species is an error, just as saying the elephant is a species would be. Kevin McE (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Cortical Inheritance

Could someone more knowledgeable than myself take a look at the new article Cortical Inheritance? The subject is introduced as a synonym of structural inheritance, so should the articles be merged? Also, sentences like "The mainstream scientific community believes that all inheritance is passed on via the genes in the nucleus of a cell" are troubling, especially considering this editor's other contributions. Cheers, mgiganteus1 (talk) 17:08, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

See also this Amazon review, apparently written by the same person, and their subsequent replies to user comments. It appears that User:Ex gratia used his/her own Amazon review as a source for the claim that "Critics of Coyne's book Why Evolution is True have pointed out that he lies to sell his theory of macro-evolution". mgiganteus1 (talk) 17:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
As explained here, I think the two articles should be merged. I have added merger proposal banners to both articles to encourage a discussion. Boghog (talk) 19:06, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Hybrid vs crossbreed

Hi! I started a thread on the talk for crossbreed about the actuall differenses between the terms hybrid and crossbreed. Could anyone here help out, as well? --AHA2 (talk) 21:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Need help with article about SEX! (Sex between plants, actually, but I do need help...)

The Doubled Haploidy article has been tagged as being too technical for most readers to understand since November of 2007. I attempted to fix the problem (see Talk:Doubled haploidy and History:Doubled haploidy ), but another editor felt that my revision was worse than the original (I am not saying he is wrong), and did not provide an alternative. Because we could not arrive at a consensus for any course of action that would bring the article up to Wikipedia standards, I am asking for help from someone with enough expertise to rewrite the lead paragraph so that is is understandable to the average reader. (I also asked for assistance at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback but have not received any response so far.) Any help would be very much appreciated. Guy Macon 13:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Familial DNA Database Searches

I am writing an article on familial DNA database searches, which are currently mentioned in the DNA Profiling entry as familial searching. The technology is rather complicated and the history of their use and the debate about their use is extensive. The UK and US are now using these searches in criminal investigations and proceedings. I've posted a draft on my user page User: Spu2011 (please feel free to provide feedback, if you are so inclined!) and need to know if this should be a seperate article or should just expand upon the section in DNA Profiling. Spu2011 (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Please Assess this article starting with the map statements and origins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J1_(Y-DNA)JohnLloydScharf (talk) 01:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:List_of_haplogroups_of_historical_and_famous_figures#Hitler_removed

Looking for some opinions from others. An editor wants to remove Adolf Hitler from a list of 'famous DNA'. Maybe some sort of consensus can be reached.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 05:40, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Genetic engineering template

I have been having a discussion recently with another editor regarding the set up of the {{Genetic engineering}} template and it would be good to get other editiors involved. The general disagreement is over the notability of single transgenic events and whether they should be redlinked in the template. There is also a related move request at Talk:GTS 40-3-2. AIRcorn (talk) 04:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Help needed at Haplodiploid sex-determination system

There have been repeated changes to a table on this page that I think are wrong, from several anonymous IP addresses (I haven't reverted the last one). The changes have to do with relatedness ratios. It would be helpful if knowledgeable people could check this. Am I making a mistake? Thanks in advance. Nadiatalent (talk) 16:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Behavior mutation

The new article titled Behavior mutation is a complete orphan: no other articles link to it. To do:

  • Other articles should link to it.
  • The links from this article to others were formatted like external links. I've fixed some of them so they're normal internal links, but most of them still need to be attended to.

Michael Hardy (talk) 18:40, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


Genetics in an Indian caste article

Could someone please cast their eye over Paraiyar#Genetics. It is complete gobbledegook to me and it is common for contributors to Indian caste/community articles to show "half a story" in order to promote a POV. The contributor was editing from an IP registered to General Motors & so I am unsure of their technical expertise etc. If someone could actually rephrase the section so that it makes sense to the layperson then so much the better. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 18:05, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Extra eyes needed at Epigenetics and Behaviour

I randomly stumbled upon this article. I have no idea what this article is really about, but it raises several red flags of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. I got zero expertise on this, so I can't say if it's a load of baloney that should be sent to deletion, or if it's salvageable with some work, but I know that it needs some attention from people that know something about something. I'm cross-posting this notice at WP:MED and WP:PSYCH to, so as many eyes as possible will look at this. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Factual inaccuracies in Monohybrid cross

Could someone knowledgeable check Monohybrid cross for factual accuracy? There are several allegations of factual inaccuracy on the talk page, and some of the statements seems flatly untrue or contradictory to my freshman-biology-only eyes (e.g. "The cross between their [P-generation] offspring is referred to as a dihybrid cross, in which parents are both heterozygous at one locus.").

-Equaaldoors (talk) 21:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Help with genome

Can anyone help me expand the genome section of the tammar wallaby article? I hope to get it to FA status. Here's a database that collects papers relating to the tammar genome. I have a tough time understanding them. LittleJerry (talk) 18:15, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Assistance requested at Phage display

Myself and at least one other editor have been unable to verify claims being made by a (potential) COI contributor to the article. Please see the article talk page for additional information as the technical nature of the claims is beyond my ability to succinctly reproduce accurately. Thank you for your contributions! --Tgeairn (talk) 01:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Replisome article cleaned up

I cleaned up the article on the replisome. This included content reframing, major additions, and much improved citations. Would anyone care to proof it?Thermodynamic (talk) 11:55, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Nice! Could someone reference it some more? (I've wikilinked the article for easy navigation)Staticd (talk) 08:07, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Agree, great job in exapnding this article. I have tweaked the article a bit further. Boghog (talk) 12:54, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Outdated articles?

Comments on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Static_vs_dynamic_topics:_seriously_outdated_articles will be appreciated, so we can get a general perspective on this. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 13:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

New article: DNA helix

It's a new article. I don't know what to make of it. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:05, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Came here to say the same thing. Looks like an essay-like fork of DNA. --NeilN talk to me 14:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Please see also: User talk:Notahelix#Your username Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:08, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Same thing?

At least one article (e.g. Four-gamete test) has a redlink to "segregating site", and others use the phrase without definition. An internet search suggested that this might be (essentially?) the same thing as Single-nucleotide polymorphism. Is this right and, if so, can something be added to that article to indicate the relation? Melcombe (talk) 11:04, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Reading frame

I have done a small rewrite of the reading frame article, but I have put in some statements that I am not 100% sure of. I have put that a single nucleic acid strand may have six reading frames (three in one direction, and three in the reverse direction) as that seemed logical, but I have no source for it, though it seems to make sense. Also I have put that transcription occurs 3' to 5' along the DNA strand, and translation occurs 5' to 3' along the RNA strand, as I think is commonly known. Therefore for DNA the 5' to 3' reading frames can be disregarded (for transcription), and for RNA strands the 3' to 5' reading frames can be disregarded (for translation), but I have a niggling feeling that there may be an exception to these cases somewhere, although a quick google search doesn't bring up anything. My main source is Lodish; et al. (2007). Molecular Cell Biology (6th ed.). W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 978-1429203142. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help). I would appreciate if someone could review the article and correct it, thanks! -Zynwyx (talk) 10:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

What you wrote in the article looks good to me. The only substantive problems I could see predated your edits. One I've fixed; the other I can't check now as I don't have my textbooks handy: is it correct to call the triplets in all six reading frames "codons"? I'd have thought only the triplets in the translated reading frame are really codons, as they're the only ones than encode amino acids. The rest are just meaningless trinucleotides. I'd never refer to "codons" in an untranslated region of an mRNA, for example. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for checking over the article, I just assumed codon was a generic term for any three nucleotides. So a codon is a triplet of nucleotides on a DNA or RNA strand, that will eventually equate to an amino acid? Also as a side note, the Complementarity (molecular biology) article seems to need a big overhaul, I may try to do some work on it tomorrow (and use references). -Zynwyx (talk) 00:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
No worries, and yeah, I checked a genetics and a bio textbook and a med dictionary, and all agreed: for a codon to be a codon, it has to encode either an amino acid or a stop signal. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Non-helical DNA structure

Non-helical DNA structure (Talk:Non-helical DNA structure) is a relatively new article and one which has a lot of content, but is written in an essay style and is mainly written by one editor. I don't feel familiar enough with the subject to properly understand everything in the article, but perhaps someone else from here could review it and make some suggestions? -Zynwyx (talk) 02:11, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

see Talk:Non-helical DNA structure for discussion, to amalgate responses — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.234.93.35 (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
We'd really appreciate some help from someone familiar with topoisomerases and/or bacterial chromosome replication. Please see Talk:Non-helical models of nucleic acid structure#Balancing information needed. Thanks! Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 04:45, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

third party review needed on Arrhenotoky

Regarding the usage of the term arrhenotoky in a manner nonsynonymous to haplodiploidy; On the question of wether to merge the two articles.

I've managed to find two nice looking secondary sources and used it to expand the article but they are paywalled. (annual reviews and oxford journals) Another editor User:Macdonald-ross is not convinced about the existence of multiple definitions (due to the paywall). See the discussion on Talk:Arrhenotoky. If some one can read normark 2003 in the page 401 section halodiploidy and give their comments on the article I would be grateful. (Normark, B. B. (2003). "The evolution of alternative genetic systems in insects". Annual Review of Entomology. 48: 397–423. doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112703. PMID 12221039. ) Staticd (talk) 19:15, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection to this, and would suggest what we need is an actual relevant quotation from the above paper. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:10, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia

IP edit-warring on this page, has added [4] or similar for the 4th time. Dougweller (talk) 05:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

ENCODE

I have just proposed the ENCODE publication as a candidate for the front page news. Please comment at WP:ITN/C is you have an opinion. It would also be useful to add more material about this event to the article if you can. Looie496 (talk) 19:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

It's now up, so this article will probably get significant views over the next few days. I've added what information I am able to, but I'm not a geneticist, so my ability to handle this is limited. Anything more that people are able to add would be great. Looie496 (talk) 04:35, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Biology and political orientation

Hot potato article that needs work. Has a genetics section. Tijfo098 (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

The articles this discussion should concern:

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits
First as a reality check
the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry
More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china
Of the articles you mention....
GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food
GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism
genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering
GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies
GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.
They care about food and the contoversies. Right?
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops
Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms
The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)



Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Wikipedia article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.
(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.
(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.
I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:
a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)
b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).
c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Wikipedia.
Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.
I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.
Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

  • To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

  • I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

Issue 5

  • I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.
Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.
As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Wikipedia. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Wikipedia tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.
I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...
Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

  • genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
  • GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
  • GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
  • GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
  • regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
  • controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:
  • History
    • [main to GM History]
  • Process
    • [main to GM Techniques]
  • Plant based
    • [main to GM Crops][see also to GM crops]
  • Animal based
    • [see also to GM animals]
  • Regulation
    • [main to GM Regulation]
  • Detection
  • Health concerns
    • [main to GM health concerns (if split from controversies)]
  • Other concerns
    • [main to GM controversies]

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Britain launches genome database for patients' DNA

Today David Cameron unveiled plans for a National Health Service DNA database that could one day hold the genetic details of every person in Britain (see news reports here and here). Where does this development fit on Wikipedia? The United Kingdom National DNA Database is a criminal intelligence database. HelenOnline (talk) 13:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

According to this article in the Guardian, the UK already has a (health) DNA database, the UK Biobank which does have a Wikipedia article. HelenOnline (talk) 15:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

so you think not that happens all by itself

this is how my brain works can look at a thing and tell you how far way if its brokin most of the time my small brain fixes it i have know idea how this works as a child i fixed all household stuff and did not know[1] how or why too this day — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.200.160 (talk) 23:27, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Renaming "prokaryotic transcription" to "Bacterial transcription" ?

What do you think? Details are here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teaktl17 (talk • contribs) 23:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Guidelines on Indian communities

Hi all, I refer to the confusion on genetic studies as brought out by Sitush earlier. Owing to such confusion, and issues concerning pushing of POVs using published data (on race / ethnicity, caste-exclusivity, socio-religious notions of purity, cultural-religious ideas of origin and traits), fictitiously attributing own POVs to published data, and such issues across wiki articles, there is a requirement for common consensus and general guidelines. Request interested participants here to discuss the following points.
1) Should results of genetic studies be allowed / mentioned in wiki articles ?
2) If results are mentioned, what should the header state?
3) Should a brief mention of materials and/or methods be provided along with results in the article, so a reader wud also know (a) the sample size, (b) region from where taken, (c) communities tested, (c) method(s) used ?
Expecting the above to serve as a starter for (several) discussions to follow. Thanks.--Mayasutra [= No ||| Illusion =] (talk) 15:09, 11 February 2013 (UTC)Mayasutra

About Hitoshi Kihara and wheat genetics

Hello WikiProject Genetics people!
Apparently Kihara was one of the most significant scientists in wheat genetics. I've started the biographical article, but the science is beyond me.
Could you possibly have a little look into this? Thank you! Pete aka --Shirt58 (talk) 14:29, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Recent African origin of modern humans

Could we get a few eyes on the info at Talk:Recent African origin of modern humans#New study about hpalogroup A00. --Moxy (talk) 21:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

New article

Just a ping that I created Horse genome. Would appreciate anyone who'd like to add necessary scientific info to it, I am not a scientist, just a horse geek with an interest in equine genetics. Montanabw(talk) 22:01, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit war

We have an edit war ongoing at African admixture in Europe - could we get a few experienced editors to look over this edit - see what is going on here.Moxy (talk) 19:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Europeans share common ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago

Pls see Talk:Genetic history of Europe#Europeans share common ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago -- Moxy (talk) 02:32, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

concern about Most recent common ancestor

from the article:"The identical ancestors point for Homo sapiens has been estimated to between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago.[4][verification needed]"

(I was the one who inserted the verification needed, as well as, perhaps wrongly, put up a cleanup tag that someone else took down.)My real question, is, this true or at least somewhat verifiable as a minority viewpoint(which should be labelled as such, if so)? It cites something from Nature, which sounds good, but it's a pay site.I'm wondering if it's a letter to the editor. Since I've reead that people have been living in Australia for more than 50,000 years, and in the Americas for at least 13,000 year I think it's probably wrong.Thanks.-Rich Peterson76.218.104.120 (talk) 05:40, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

It does appear to be a letter, although it was written by scientists/statisticians from MIT and Yale, includes statistical analysis and is well sourced. Here is a link to a free version of the full text. This article is a comment on the first one and appeared in the same version of Nature.
The 10,000 to 5,000 range does seem very low, considering that migration out of Africa is estimated at about 100,000 years ago. What this range is, is a statistical estimate created using computer models. I think what they're getting at is that populations in places like Australia and the Americas have not been in reproductive isolation for some time, so statistically there is no one alive now who wouldn't have a common ancestor 10,000 years ago in say Europe. The authors admit that their migration model is simplified and that data on migration rates is limited. I think the sentence in question could be misleading and should be clarified with details from the full reference and maybe the second link above. Sarahj2107 (talk) 09:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
thanks, could you or some other knowledgeable person around here do the clarification? This is important because, since my earlier post, i've found a religious website that uses the same nature article to support a literal interpretation of the bible. Frankly I wonder if that's the agenda of wikiproject genetic geneology.76.218.104.120 (talk) 11:16, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I will see if I have time later to do it. It doesn't surprise me that creationist would use it to try to support their beliefs, however, there is no agenda by wikiproject genetics or wikipedia in general. You should be careful about what kind of accusations you are making. Sarahj2107 (talk) 11:44, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I didn't say wikiproject genetics. Why are you so certain?76.218.104.120 (talk) 04:38, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I actually just read the article. It actually doesn't say anything about "5 to 10 thousand years ago". I tried to wrap my head around their statements to see if I could independently arrive at the article's 5 to 10k years ago claim via routine calculations, but could not. There are several statements about mean identical ancestor points arrived at in their simulations depending on changes to variables and the models, placing it at 2,158 BC, or 5,353 BC, and also noting that if people in Tasmania were totally reproductively isolated until 1803, then the latest possible identical ancestor point corresponds to the flooding of the Bass Strait some 9,000–12,000 years ago. Honestly, I think this is far enough away from routine calculations to make the claim in most recent common ancestor constitute original research. At the very least it probably needs in-text attribution to the authors. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:58, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Séralini affair

This article, about controversial experiments on rats claimed to show that GM (Roundup-resistant) maize and Roundup "are extremely toxic", could do with some neutral eyes: it is the subject of heavy editing by SPAs. I had to semi-protect it for a short time this morning because of repeated attempts to blank it as an attack page. JohnCD (talk) 15:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

GM food controversies FAQ

Editors are invited to comment on (and improve) a draft FAQ for the Genetically modified food controversies page (possibly to be transcluded to related pages as well). This is a topic area associated with a lot of fringe science (WP:FRINGE), so the FAQ is focused towards objections from that direction. The talk page section for discussion is here. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Paleogenetics article in need of attention

Hi all,

I came across the article Paleogenetics and found it in pretty sorry shape—short, substandard writing quality, lack of strong and up-to-date sources. I've made some preliminary minor copyedits and removed some particularly bad bits, but the article is still rather shoddy. I have some knowledge of the anthropological aspect of it and would be happy to help out with that bit, but I am busy with other things at the moment and cannot guarantee much in-depth support for the next month or so. I was hoping that I'd find some editors around here who would be able to help improve this neglected article, which deals with a field that is quickly growing in prominence, especially with recent work on the Neandertal and Denisovan genomes by Svante Pääbo and others. Thanks, Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 06:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Hey,

I agree with you, that this article indeed needs some attention. Additionally I am confused about three things:

1. What is the intended difference between the articles ancient DNA and Paleogenetics ?

2. Shouldn't it also be mentioned that you can study "old" DNA that is "fossilized" within recent organisms, e.g. in Retropseudogenes, etc.? (see for example this study, which uses Retropseudogenes to analyze the contemporary and ancient human transcriptome: Shemesh, R., Novik, A., Edelheit, S., & Sorek, R. (2006). Genomic fossils as a snapshot of the human transcriptome. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 103(5), 1364–1369.) IronicPseudonym (talk) 15:02, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Demographics of Mexico

Input is needed regarding a dispute about how best to represent the results of the INMEGEN study.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:56, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Genetics pseudoscience

Can any qualified individuals in the project comment as to whether the opinions expressed here by "bioscience resource project": [5] are pseudoscientific? Also their main news website: [6]. Context: [7]. Here is the Wikipedia context: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Strange_activity_at_Monsanto-related_articles. Trying to figure out if this is a pseudoscience/fringe group (it appears to be, but I've never heard of them), IRWolfie- (talk) 00:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestions welcomed for genetics bibliography

For a while I've been compiling a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted in user space for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. Please feel free to suggest any reliable sources you know of, and I will look for those for adding them to the bibliography. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:06, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Conversion table for Y chromosome haplogroups AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conversion table for Y chromosome haplogroups. Dougweller (talk) 08:06, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Pseudogene page

From the talk page:

Please update this article.

Can someone please update this article. Some of these citations are over thirty years old. Listing Pseudogene as dysfunctional is just not the case anymore. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.65.170.183 (talk) 12:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

In support of this request:

Protein Coding 'Junk Genes' May Be Linked to Cancer

In the current paper in Nature Methods, researchers present a new proteogenomics method, which makes it possible to track down protein coding genes in the remaining 98.5% of the genome, something that until now has been an impossible task to pursue. Among other things, the research shows that some pseudogenes produce proteins indicating that they indeed have a function.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131117155500.htm

-- Jo3sampl (talk) 14:01, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Genetic anthropology

Shouldn't this stub be called "Anthropological Genetics" which seems to be the most common name (although both are used) and considerably expanded? Cross-posting to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthropology. Dougweller (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

There are a lot of POV-pushing content forks among the anthropology articles at present. The term "physical anthropology" seems to be being supplanted by the term "biological anthropology" in the current professional terminology,Biological Anthropology section of American Anthropological Association and yet here on Wikipedia there are several articles that all stake claims to being the general article on biological anthropology, with competing points of view because of poor sourcing to push ideologies. The article you mention should probably turn into a redirect to the best existing article, and eventually some of the articles will have to be deprecated (as POV forks) and merged into one main article with neutral point of view. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:46, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Sources on human population diversity and classification

There are quite a few Wikipedia articles that cite primary research publications on human genetics, often to push a particular point of view on human race categories. I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human population categories and related articles. The Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies.

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

On the topic of human population genetics and variation within and among human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.

As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.

Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when his primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays

in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book

which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article

in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.

So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are or have been available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.

  • Koenig, Barbara A.; Lee, Sandra Soo-jin; Richardson, Sarah S., eds. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4324-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.

  • Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S., eds. (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.

  • Ramachandran, Sohini; Tang, Hua; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure". In Speicher, Michael R.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Motulsky, Arno G. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches (PDF). Heidelberg: Springer Scientific. pp. 589–615. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Retrieved 29 October 2013. Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29]. Given the central role this work has played in our field, we will begin by discussing it briefl y and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defined 'races' (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30], Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifications. ... His finding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20]). {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

The Ramachandran, Tang, et al. (2010) book chapter is of course written by leading researchers on human population genetics, and is part of a very authoritative advanced textbook on human genetics for medical doctors and other specialists.

Like the previous source, the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.

  • Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Anthropology series number fifteen. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013. Actually, the plant geneticist Jeffry Mitton had made the same observation in 1970, without finding that Lewontin's conclusion was fallacious. And Lewontin himself not long ago pointed out that the 85 percent within-group genetic variability figure has remained remarkably stable as studies and genetic markers have multiplied, whether you define populations on linguistic or physical grounds. What's more, with a hugely larger and more refined database to deal with, D. J. Witherspoon and colleagues concluded in 2007 that although, armed with enough genetic information, you could assign most individuals to 'their' population quite reliably, 'individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own.' {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Barbujani, Guido; Colonna, Vincenza (15 September 2011). "Chapter 6: Genetic Basis of Human Biodiversity: An Update". In Zachos, Frank E.; Habel, Jan Christian (eds.). Biodiversity Hotspots: Distribution and Protection of Conservation Priority Areas. Springer. pp. 97–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_6. ISBN 978-3-642-20992-5. Retrieved 23 November 2013. The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates, that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species' genetic variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof.

The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.

  • Bliss, Catherine (23 May 2012). Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7408-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Barbujani, Guido; Ghirotto, S.; Tassi, F. (2013). "Nine things to remember about human genome diversity". Tissue Antigens. 82 (3): 155–164. doi:10.1111/tan.12165. ISSN 0001-2815. PMID 24032721. The small genomic differences between populations and the extensive allele sharing across continents explain why historical attempts to identify, once and for good, major biological groups in humans have always failed. ... We argue that racial labels may not only obscure important differences between patients but also that they have become positively useless now that cheap and reliable methods for genotyping are making it possible to pursue the development of truly personalized medicine.

By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to this article.

An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.

GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM

In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.

Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions.

A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.

  • Lee, Sandra; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara; Altman, Russ; Brown, Melissa; Camarillo, Albert; Cavalli-Sforza, Luca; Cho, Mildred; Eberhardt, Jennifer; Feldman, Marcus; Ford, Richard; Greely, Henry; King, Roy; Markus, Hazel; Satz, Debra; Snipp, Matthew; Steele, Claude; Underhill, Peter (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics" (PDF). Genome Biology. 9 (7): 404. doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. ISSN 1465-6906. PMC 2530857. PMID 18638359. Retrieved 3 December 2013. We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time Human genetic variation within continents is, for the most part, geographically continuous and clinal, particularly in regions of the world that have not received many immigrants in recent centuries [18]. Genetic data cannot reveal an individual's full geographic ancestry precisely, although emerging research has been used to identify geographic ancestry at the continental and subcontinental levels [3,19]. Genetic clusters, however, are far from being equivalent to sociopolitical racial or ethnic categories. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |display-authors=18 (help)

Other current review articles related to human genetics include

  • Barbujani, Guido; Pigliucci, Massimo (2013). "Human races" (PDF). Current Biology. 23 (5): R185–R187. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.024. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 23473555. Retrieved 2 December 2013. What does this imply for the existence of human races? Basically, that people with similar genetic features can be found in distant places, and that each local population contains a vast array of genotypes. Among the first genomes completely typed were those of James Watson and Craig Venter, two U.S. geneticists of European origin; they share more alleles with Seong-Jin Kim, a Korean scientist (1,824,482 and 1,736,340, respectively) than with each other (1,715,851). This does not mean that two random Europeans are expected to be genetically closer to Koreans than to each other, but certainly highlights the coarseness of racial categorizations.

I hope these sources are of help to Wikipedians working on articles within the scope of this project. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:33, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Genome infobox

I would love to add a genome information box to the pages of species that includes the number of chromosomes, karyotype, size of the genome, GC content, and so on. I've mocked up a simple example on User:Sdjackman. Could a Wikipedia veteran help me implement this? Thanks, Shaun —Preceding undated comment added 01:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Shaun, I think this idea has potential. But given that such a box could end up present on thousands of articles about species, I'd suggest first investigating whether there's broad agreement that such a box is desired. The logical place to ask would be Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life, but that page doesn't seem to be well trafficked, so perhaps Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) would be better. Note there's already a Template:Infobox genome, although so far few articles contain it ([8]). Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 01:53, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Great! I hadn't noticed that Template:Infobox_genome already exists. Thanks for pointing me to this resource, Adrian. I've added a Infobox genome to my talk page User:Sdjackman. —Preceding undated comment added 02:31, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources on behavior genetics

Wikipedia has a lot of interesting articles based on the ongoing research in behavior genetics, both in humans and in nonhuman animals. I've been reading university textbooks on genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. That university has long been a center of research on human behavior genetics, being the site of a major study of monozygotic twins reared apart. For the last four years, I have attended a weekly graduate seminar there on behavior genetics, keeping up with the latest publications on all aspects of behavior genetics, from the genes to the behaviors. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for updating the articles on behavior genetics and related topics. The Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies.

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

Other Wikipedians who watch the article Behavioural genetics did all of us a great favor on the article talk page by suggesting helpful sources. In particular, User:Pete.Hurd suggested an authoritative textbook on behavior genetics, covering both the human and the animal research, and following up on his suggestion led me to several other helpful sources with similar subject cataloging in libraries.

Noting that Behavioural genetics is listed as a start-class, high-importance article by the WikiProjects for both genetics and psychology, I will start a workpage of an article update draft in my user space, relying on the sources recommended on the article talk page and on others listed here (in approximate order of date of publication, which is also almost but not exactly the order in which I have read them over the last few years):

  • Bazzett, Terence J. (2008). An Introduction to Behavior Genetics. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer. pp. 241–242. ISBN 978-0-87893-049-4. Taken together, these findings suggest that about 50% of the variation seen in IQ scores is accounted for by genetics and a nearly equal percentage is accounted for by environment. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Anholt, Robert R. H.; Mackay, Trudy F. C. (2010). Principles of behavioral genetics. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-372575-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Segal, Nancy L. (2012). Born Together—Reared Apart. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05546-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Plomin, Robert; DeFries, John C.; Knopik, Valerie S. (24 September 2012). Behavioral Genetics. Shaun Purcell (Appendix: Statistical Methods in Behaviorial Genetics). Worth Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4292-4215-8. Retrieved 4 September 2013. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

There are many useful review articles and overview news stories from peer-reviewed scientific journals that meet the WP:MEDRS guidelines and are very useful sources for updating articles about behavior genetics (and I encourage Wikipedians to suggest others besides those listed here).

Some more general reference books about genetics or behavior also touch on behavior genetics issues through book chapters.

  • Spinath, Frank M.; Johnson, Wendy (2011). "Chapter 10: Behavior Genetics". In Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas; von Stumm, Sophie; Furnham, Adrian (eds.). The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Individual Differences. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. doi:10.1002/9781444343120. ISBN 978-1-4443-3438-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Maxson, Stephen C. (10 October 2012). "Chapter 1: Behavioral Genetics". In Weiner, Irving B.; Nelson, Randy J.; Mizumori, Sheri (eds.). Handbook of Psychology (PDF). Vol. Volume 3: Behavioral Neuroscience. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-89059-2. Archived from the original on 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2013. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |archivedate= (help)

I would be delighted to hear from project participants suggestions of other useful, current sources. Another Wikipedian today described the several articles now on Wikipedia about behavior genetics as a "mess," and I would be glad to clean up that mess collaboratively with other editors who are involved in this project. Please let's discuss how to use good sources to build better articles for the encyclopedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Genetic_redundancy contains some material from Creation.com (copyvio)

Some content is plagiarised from the http://creation.com/genetic-redundancy article (the author on CMI is "Peter Borger"). See this difference, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genetic_redundancy&diff=524203465&oldid=489462530 and note the phrasing of the odd English wording...

WIK = "the major part of the websites makes only a few links"

CMI = "the major part of the websites makes only a few links"

The addition was by an IP that is the University of Basel. Perhaps related there is or was a Dutch biologist who works on asthma research called Peter Borger in Basel. If Borger put in the material then he should cite where it is first used (Journal of Creation 22(2):79–84 August 2008 though that's probably not a WP:RS by WP standards) and if it is copied by another (non-Author) then it is a copyright violation unless the original is compatible (which for CMI it is not). That aside the wording is conducive to promoting an Intelligent Design agenda of casting doubts about Darwin and natural selection (with the addition of "A Darwinian Paradox" and "This is because the redundant character of the genes (which are not associated with genetic duplication and which do not mutate faster) seems to defy natural selection."). The article needs going over to remove Intelligent Design/Creation POV. Fromthehill (talk) 06:55, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Fromthehill. That content was added by 131.152.227.74 in November 2012. There have been no substantive edits to Genetic redundancy since then, so I've reverted to the version prior to 131.152.227.74's edits. I'm hoping I'll get time to clean up the article a little more over coming days. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 13:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Archived some threads

I've archived some inactive threads to subsections which were notifications about discussions that have since been closed. — Cirt (talk) 11:01, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/identity by state

Hello geneticists! Is the above old abandoned Afc submission about a notable topic? I notice that there is Identity by descent. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Identity by state is an important concept in genetics and could well be notable. But the AfC article doesn't have any information in it beyond the definition and the topic is treated better in Identity by descent. The two refs are just to random papers that happen to mention IBS, but the best refs for IBS are probably textbooks at this point. So I don't think there is anything worth preserving in this abandoned draft. If deleted, I'll create a redirect for Identity by state to Identity by descent. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Agreed, it is probably most notable as a subsection of identity by descent. Canada Hky (talk) 20:03, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I have tagged it for deletion (G13). Thanks again for taking time to check this out. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:44, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Possible merge? Cis-regulatory module and Cis-regulatory element

These two articles seem to treat "element" and "module" as roughly synonymous. I'm not a genetecist but is there a reason to have two articles? If not then they should be merged at the most common title. Thanks. --Animalparty-- (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

There articles don't state it clearly, but a regulatory module is a set of tightly clustered transcription factor binding sites, whereas a regulatory element is any sequence of DNA that regulates transcription. See for example, [9] and [10]. There is evidence that regulatory modules have interactions among the binding sites and so are more than just sets of independent regulatory elements. Because of this, I think the two articles should be kept separate. --Mark viking (talk) 23:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/FGFR1OP2

Dear genetics experts: This old abandoned Afc submission will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic, and should the article be kept? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:38, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

It's in mainspace now. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:58, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Cro-Magnon and the origin of the Basques

Can anyone help with Cro-Magnon and Origin of the Basques? If you look at Talk:Cro-Magnon I've made some comments about sources, including an interesting source for Basque genetics. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 13:03, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Epigenome editing. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:07, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 20/03

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Drug2Gene. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 24/03

User:Sapereaudeincipe/Chromoplexy. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 11:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Epigenome editing

Hi everyone. I hope I'm at the right project. There is an article in the dreaded Articles for Creation project awaiting review, and perhaps some of you can help! It's been waiting for a review for a while, and i have a feeling it hasn't received one as it's out of the scope of many of us in the project. Please help by reviewing it for either being moved into the article space, or explaining why it can't yet be a wikipedia article and make friend suggestions for improvement. Please see Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Epigenome editing. Thanks! SarahStierch (talk) 16:42, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Note that the creator has bypassed AfC and created the article at Epigenome editing. --Mark viking (talk) 17:10, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
I have done a history merge to repair the cut-and-paste move, and this is once again at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Epigenome editing. JohnCD (talk) 22:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 27/03

Is this database notable? Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/MethBase. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:42, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Sexual differentiation articles -- redundancy/merge discussion

Opinions are needed from this WikiProject on this matter (WP:Permalink): Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anatomy#Sexual differentiation articles. Flyer22 (talk) 22:36, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 25/04

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Selective Chemical Labeling of 5- hydroxymethylcytosine. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:37, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Page merger discussion

A discussion is taking place that may be of interest to some members of this project at Talk:XY sex-determination system#Proposed merge with Maternal influence on sex determination. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:14, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Genetics in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Genetics for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 18:51, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Anyone interested in representing the project in this interview? Best, –Mabeenot (talk) 00:13, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Replied. I look forward to hearing from the other editors involved in this project. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:11, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Royal Society journals - subscription offer for one year

I'm delighted to say that the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy for science, is offering 24 Wikipedians free access for one year to its prestigious range of scientific journals. Please note that much of the content of these journals is already freely available online, the details varying slightly between the journals – see the Royal Society Publishing webpages. For the purposes of this offer the Royal Society's journals are divided into 3 groups: Biological sciences, Physical sciences and history of science. For full details and signing-up, please see the applications page. Initial applications will close on 25 May 2014, but later applications will go on the waiting list. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 03:12, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

"Genetic history of" <geographic location>

As discussed at Talk:Genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula#Page move suggestion there are a number of pages relevant to the apparently defunct WikiProject Human Genetic History, that have pages of the form "Genetic history of" <geographic location>. It is suggested that these might be helpfully moved to something like "Genetic history of people of" <geographic location> or "Human Genetic history of" <geographic location>. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:07, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

New article bot

Just a note that User:InceptionBot generates a new article list for Genetics. There are three examples for adding the results to a Project page, replacing Russia with Genetics. The search rules can be modified. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:33, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Prokaryote VS Eukaryote

I believe we can now, in 2011, assume that the concept of prokaryotes vs. eukaryotes is obsolete... As it is now agreed by everyone with a decent background in biology; archaea are closer to eukaryotes than they are to bacteria. Both archaea and bacteria are still considered "prokaryotes"; which makes no logical sense. Therefore, I propose; like many did before me, that when an author refers to bacteria, the term "bacteria" is used. If writing about archaea, usage of the term "archaea" is best. Finally, if speaking of both; it is preferable to say "bacteria and archaea" or "archaea and bacteria" than "prokaryotes".

I think a detail like this one would indeed contribute to more accurate and reliable articles.

Archaea include halophiles and thermophiles. Since these organisms lack nuclei, it makes more sense to categorize them as prokaryotes. Moreover, they do not share several qualities with eukaryotes. Except for the lack of peptidoglycan and the inability to cause disease in humans, archaea have numerous similarities to eubacteria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:E:1600:403:F8ED:D19A:AC46:E938 (talk) 23:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

N-32 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.203.202.109 (talk) 15:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't like to throw such terms overboard just because they don't refer to monophyletic groups. Terms like reptile (paraphyletic) and warm-blooded animal (polyphyletic, like procaryote) are quite useful as long as it is made clear that they don't define a genetic relationship. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I support ἀνυπόδητος. If terms designating polyphyletic groups were banned, writing about biology would be much harder. Maproom (talk) 19:38, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for review and verification

Hi. Would you please review and verify the Genetics section on article Sarmatians? I need help for that section (not written by me). If I posted my request on a wrong talk page/project, please tell me where I can find experienced editors who are familiar with topics/sections like that? Thanks. --Zyma (talk) 15:17, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

RfC response: 2

Responding to the RfC, I've read the section and am mystified ... What exactly does the following mean in non-technical English?:

A revelation of the study is the surprising presence of a Turkic-rooted woman among the Pokrovka Sarmatians, and the complete absence of any pointers characteristic for the Indo-Iranians, who reputedly constituted a bulk, if not all, of the Sarmatians.

Is it trying to say this: that various people wrote that the Sarmatians were Indo-Iranian in origin; but they are wrong? If so, perhaps it could be rewritten more simply. Also, the word "reputedly" is a weasel word, so if we report the claim about the Sarmatians being mostly or all Indo-Iranian, a citation is necessary. Here is my first try at rewriting the sentence which caused my difficulty:

The study of the Pokrovka Sarmatians revealed two surprises: they include a woman of Turkic origin, and they include no people of Indo-Iranian descent. The second point refutes the claim [citation needed] that the Sarmatians were all, or mostly, Indo-Iranian in origin.

However, the second sentence contains a logical fallacy, and it's as follows. Unless the people in the Pokrovka sample numbered at least one half of all Sarmatians - which is extremely unlikely - the fact that the sample contains no people of Indo-Iranian descent does not refute the claim that the Sarmatians were mostly (i.e. more than 50%) Indo-Iranian in origin. So here's my second attempt:

The study of the Pokrovka Sarmatians revealed two surprises: they include a woman of Turkic origin, and they include no people of Indo-Iranian descent. The second point refutes the claim [citation needed] that the Sarmatians were all Indo-Iranian in origin.

Note that I've glossed over one point: I've translated "the complete absence of any pointers characteristic for the Indo-Iranians" into "no people of Indo-Iranian descent". If this is an over-simplification, feel free to fix it. yoyo (talk) 12:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Community genetics

Hello, genetics experts! Here's an old Afc submission that will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic, and should the draft be kept and improved instead? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:56, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I can understand the jargon in the article. But it leaves me with the feeling that "community genetics" is not really a field of study, just a label. It lists plenty of research papers, but no actual results, conjectures, or findings. Maproom (talk) 07:02, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Maproom. I was curious, so I did an Internet search, and found that there is a Journal of Community Genetics and that there was another publication Community Genetics which has changed its name to Public Health Genomics at about the same time that the former journal started publishing. Is this latter term perhaps the more common name for the field? I am a musician, not a biologist, so I have no idea. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
These are two separate fields. Public Health Genomics and Journal of Community Genetics are both about the medical applications of genetics to human communities. The Wikipedia article however is about the relationships between plants and the populations of insects and other small creatures which live on them. So, IMHO, if the article is accepted it should be given a less confusing title. Maproom (talk) 13:58, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Wow, that would be confusing. I wonder if the term really is used in both contexts. It seems unlikely. Thanks for pointing that out. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm convinced that the term is used in both contexts, quite often for both. There was previously a page called Population groups in biomedicine which would seem to be quite a good match to the medical meaning of community genetics. I can't find the discussion about the merger of that article, perhaps someone else could have more luck in tracking that down. If that merger could be undone, then perhaps Community genetics (medicine) could be a redirect to it, and Community genetics (ecology) could work as a title for this one. I think the subject of this proposed page is worthwhile, though the draft could use some work to make it a less one-sided view. There is a substantially different definition "Community genetics is the study of the interaction between genes within a species and populations of other species in a community." visible in google scholar, though the article itself is not accessible. I think it is also not true that foliar arthropods have been the main focus so far, intertidal communities seem to be a significant area of research. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:19, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
The medical side could perhaps be hatnoted to medical genetics. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, Maproom has edited the draft, so it will not be deleted now for six months. Hopefully during that time it will be improved to the point where it can be moved to mainspace. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
So correcting an error postpones deletion? I never knew that. I shall be more careful in future. Maproom (talk) 17:23, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, the db-g13 deletion reason is that the content of the Afc submission has not been edited for six months or more. This is to prevent old drafts from hanging around for years. A draft could be deleted for other reasons, though, such as being an attack page or a hoax. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:23, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Ashkenazi Jews

There is a general consensus on the article talk page that the amount of material in this article on genetics (at Ashkenazi Jews#Genetics) is WP:UNDUE, especially given the fact that there is an article solely devoted to this topic (Genetic studies on Jews). Genetic studies are, in part, being utilized to promote specific points of view about the ethnic origins of Ashkenazi Jews (primarily, whether they originated in Europe or the Middle East). But there is a clear recognition that those editors who have deep knowledge of the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jews are not the best experts on weighing the merits of conflicting studies on genetics.

This article section desperately needs the experience of editors who can objectively assess the comparative value of these genetic studies and help other editors decide what to include, what to prune and the amount of emphasis and weight these studies should receive. Your assistance would be welcome but any editor taking this on would be advised to announce what you are doing on the article talk page. Thank you for considering this request for assistance! Liz Read! Talk! 12:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Confusing categories

Category: Human gene and Category: Human genes should probably be merged. Although I'm not a specialist, the only difference I can see is that one's title is singular and the other plural. There probably is a MOS item about singular or plural category titles. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/glnALG operon

Dear genetics experts: Here's another old AfC submission that appears to be relevant to this project. Is this a notable topic, and should the page be kept rather than being deleted as a stale draft? —Anne Delong (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

It looks to me worthy to be an article. But I have two comments about it, which I would prefer to make at the article's talk page, but being an Article for Creation it doesn't have one:
  • It repeatedly mentions "nitrogen level". This can't mean the total amount of nitrogen in the cell. And it can't mean elementary nitrogen, N2. So what does it mean? The article ought to explain.
  • The "Homology" section makes no sense at all. Homology between what and what?
Maproom (talk) 16:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Maproom. I've moved it to Draft: space, so you should now be able to start up a talk page and add your comments. This is something new that is being tried out; let me know what you think. The AfC comments at the top of the article will disappear when it's accepted, but the talk page comments will remain. I'm pretty sure that the title shouldn't start with a capital letter; the software did that automatically. Am I right? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:56, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
You are right on the capitalisation, compare lac operon. I'll put my comments on its new talk page when I have more time. Maproom (talk) 17:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
I fixed the title by adding a "lowercase title" template. Apparently this just hides the capital letter rather than really changing the title... oh well, whatever works. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:55, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Gene cluster article

In mid-March, two students announced on the talk page of the Gene cluster article, that they were planning to improve the article, as a college project. They requested other editors not to edit the article until their project was assessed, om May 7th. They then made many changes to the article, adding a lot of new material.

Other editors praised their efforts. I criticised them, as I believed they were incorporating errors and misunderstandings into the article. They accepted some of my criticisms, and made some corrections.

Their deadline is now a week past, and I assume that their project is over, though they and their professor have given no feedback on it. I believe that they have made many improvements to the article, most notably the addition of material about Hox genes and the Homeobox family. But I also believe that some of the errors they introduced are still there, and should be removed.

However, I believe that I am not the best person to clear up the errors. While I believe I am technically competent to do it, I feel some "commitment" to the article, which must be a bad thing. I would prefer another editor to take a lead here. I have already stated many of my views on the errors, on the article's talk page, and can provide further details if asked. Maproom (talk) 11:19, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 27/05

These all seem to be part of some university project. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Little or nothing is known about their function of many of these genes. Furthermore many of these drafts contain a large amount of original research in the form of bioinformatics analysis. I am not sure this is the same university class, but I have previously pleaded with an instructor to restrict assignments to genes of known function (see this discussion). The only two articles that have adequate sources are Draft:Acyl-CoA Thioesterase 9 and Draft:TMEM 134. The rest should be rejected as both non-notable and containing original research. Boghog (talk) 19:47, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. Are those other 2 ready for mainspace or do they need previous editing? Ping me when possible. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:59, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello. Although the Draft:Acyl-CoA Thioesterase 9 does have valid supporting references, they must be reviewed to verify they support the text. One or two of the refs link to a database, which are NOT useful to Wikipedia to verify the statement without considerable interpretation by an expert. They are primary research tools, not "supporting references" for a Wikipedia reader. This article needs more work but I think it can be approved with some more work. Thanks, BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:59, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
FoCuSandLeArN, On second thought, the protein's function is not conclusively known, so it does not even meet notability guidelines. Your call. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 23:08, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 26/05

Draft:Transposon Sequencing (TnSeq). FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. The lede makes little sense to me, and I don't think that's because I lack the technical knowledge to understand it. Where would you like me to comment? Maproom (talk) 16:16, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello! Um, you can either install the reviewing script here or comment here and I can link this convo from the article. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:15, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Ok, I'll try here.
  • From the first paragraph: "In fact, when the transposon inserts itself in the gene, the gene's function will be disrupted." Which transposoon? Which gene? I wonder if it means "In fact, when a transposon inserts itself in a gene, the gene's function will be disrupted."
  • Second paragraph: "Transposon sequencing (Tn-seq) is a type of transposon insertion sequencing." But presumably, transposon insertion sequencing is a type of transposon sequencing, making this definition circular, or perhaps redundant. And if the reader is expected to understand "transposon insertion sequencing", it ought to link to an explanation.
  • Third paragraph: "next generation sequencing". This sounds like marketing language. If it isn't, it needs to be defined (and it would be better to use a less ephemeral term, if one exists).
  • Third paragraph again: "our knowledge of gene function remains the limiting factor in our understanding of the role genes play." This seems to mean ""our knowledge of what genes do remains the limiting factor in our understanding what genes do." I hope it can be made clearer.
I have not read the body of the article in detail, but it would benefit from copy-editing. Would you like me to do some directly on the article? Maproom (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Please do so if possible. I'll place the link to this discussion. Thanks, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I have accepted this article into mainspace: Transposon Sequencing. It's primary issue is that it's language is too technical. It would benefit from expert attention. If you feel I have made a mistake here, please nominate for deletion. Cheers, --LukeSurl t c 22:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
The subject matter is technical (and possibly to specialised for Wikipedia), so it's hard to avoid technical language. Those who can understand the technical language will notice further problems, such as those I have detailed above and on the article's talk page. No-one seems bothered about fixing them. It seems that someone has created a very specialised technical article, and then abandoned it to its fate, which, I suggest, should be deletion. I find the subject fascinating, and would like to understand it better. But while the article is unlikely to be improved from its current state, WP is probably better off without it. Maproom (talk) 13:03, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Phenotypic heterogeneity

Hello WP:Genetics. This article needs expert attention. Thanks to anyone willing to check and verify. Please, see also discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Phenotypic_heterogeneity. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 06:31, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

That should never be an article. It says, in effect, "phenotypes sometimes vary for genetic reasons", and then gives one obscure example (it could have given an obvious one like human hair color). Maproom (talk) 08:05, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Any chance to improve the article? I've found an article on the topic in a reputable journal, see external links. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:10, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Adding a second obscure example would not be an improvement. If you really want to retain and add to the article, use an obvious example such as hair colour in humans. Maproom (talk) 08:50, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Epigenetics

Please could someone have a look at Draft:Epigenetics of partner preference and comment on Draft talk:Epigenetics of partner preference? Can it made into an appropriate article? Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:50, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

This is an interesting (at least to me) article about a newly-discovered phenomenon. I'll write something on its talk page. Maproom (talk) 08:54, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Allelotype stub- merge? trim? leave as is?

I believe the new stub Allelotype conflates genotype, allele frequency, and genotyping. Scholarly sources mainly deal with chromosomal signatures of cancer cells. If any experts can improve it beyond a dictionary definition, or if it can hold water and can ever be more than a stub definition, great, other wise a judicious merge to larger articles may be warranted (I'm not a fan of isolated stubs differing by pedantically subtly elements, but in this case I'm not yet certain.) Cheers, --Animalparty-- (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Allelotype is a term used by some in the cancer community as a generalization of karyotpye to encompass copy number variation at the sequence level (loss of heterozygosity, variation in tandem repeat and microsatellite numbers) in addition to simple polymorphisms typically expressed in SNP genotypes. There exist secondary sources such as Determination of Cancer Allelotype, by Jennifer J. Ascaño and Steven M. Powell. Sorry, I don't have time to develop the article at this point. --Mark viking (talk) 20:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


Chromosome pairing

Compare Bivalent (genetics) with compare with Chromosome . We have links going to both of these, and there seems to be complete overlap, unless someone expand the bivalent article. If we do, I think there's a lot to be said for making Chromosome pairing its article title, I spotted this in the AfCs, but Idon;t have time to work on it further. DGG ( talk ) 16:55, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree that "Chromosome pairing" would be a better title. Maproom (talk) 17:59, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cambridge Epigenetix

Hello again, genetics experts. Is this abandoned AfC submission about a notable topic, and should the page be saved and improved instead of being deleted as a stale draft? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:22, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

A company which supplies tools used in research labs. Doesn't seem notable, and provides no evidence of notability. Maproom (talk) 07:11, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks; I suspected as much, but since I thought that I'd better check with someone who could understand what the compandy did. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:44, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Event (biotechnology)

Dear genetics experts: This old AfC submission is about to be deleted as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic? Should it be kept and improved instead? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I would say it is notable, but not a topic. It is a dictionary-type definition, of a basic term and of three derived terms. And there's another at Gene stacked event. Maproom (talk) 06:42, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks; it's been deleted now. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:57, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cer sequence

Dear genetics experts: Is this old AfC submission about a notable topic, and should it be kept instead of being deleted as a stale draft? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The proposed article does not say what a "cer sequence" actually is, and the source it cites does not help. The subject is genuine, but imho too specialised to justify a WP article. Maproom (talk) 07:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. If no one edits it, it should disappear shortly. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
It seems like a very specific fix for a very specific problem. If I understand it correctly, people working with plasmid ColE1 may have issues with it as it seems to form monomers before the researcher introduces the wanted nucleotides, but using Exonuclease III-generated deletions, takes out the "cer" site that causes this premature closing of the plasmid. Does not seem notable to have a WP article. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 17:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

George M. Church and associated WP:BLPN discussion

There's been discussion about George M. Church and whether his article, a suspected autobiography, needs cleanup. However, none of us really has any expertise in the subject, and we can't evaluate the claims made in the article. Could someone take a look at George M. Church, and, if warranted, weigh in at WP:BLPN#George M. Church? Thanks. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:27, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission

Genetics experts: is Draft:ANNK1 and addictive behaviors a notable topic? --Cerebellum (talk) 14:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, definitely notable. But I have not checked if there's some other article about effectively the same topic. Maproom (talk) 14:51, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I also think that Taq1A is a notable subject as it relates to addiction/cravings. It already has some several good quality references and I think it is worth bringing it up to shape. Since it also touches psychology and mental disorders, I rather not edit that article. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:15, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for the input, article is now at ANNK1 and addictive behaviors. --Cerebellum (talk) 10:08, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Israelites

Major changes made in this article based in part on genetic claims which I think are being misrepresented. I've commented at Talk:Israelites about misuse of sources, unreliable sources and OR. Eg using a year 2000 dna study and ignoring a 2013 one[11] on the Lemba, use of FamilytreeDNA, use of sources that don't actually explicitly state that a group is descended from the Israelites, insistence that the Cohen Modal Haplotype can prove Israelite (or Jewish) ancestry and coupling this with what is basically an assertion that we can rely on the Bible to back this up and state that things are proven and undisputed. A thorny subject and hard to unravel. I also and of the strong opinion that when other groups are mentioned that have articles, eg the Lemba people and the Palestinian people that articles should not contradict each other. Dougweller (talk) 08:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a tough problem in most articles about genetics of human beings on Wikipedia, as editors rush to make unwarranted claims about ethnic group relationships from unreplicated, small-n primary research studies, in complete violation of the Wikipedia content guideline on reliable sources. At length, I am finding some current peer-reviewed review articles and textbook chapters that have begun to summarize and give a balanced overview of the many primary research studies, but meanwhile there are dozens of articles on Wikipedia that need clean-up to avoid overreliance on primary studies in human genetics to make overbroad conclusions about ethnic group relationships. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:29, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Genetics of obesity

Any general improvements to Obesity#Genetics / Genetics of obesity would be most welcome (see also Talk:Obesity#Genetics). Thanks, 86.134.200.29 (talk) 18:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Mitochondrial replacement

I feel the so-called "Three-parent baby" page could benefit from some tlc (perhaps starting from the page name?). Mitochondrial replacement is in the news at the moment [12], and is likely to attract further media and public attention in the coming months. 86.134.200.29 (talk) 22:22, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

The "ethics" section is very poor. IMHO it should be rewritten from scratch, or deleted. As it is it presents sociologists as interfering busybodies, who object to a procedure while understanding neither its purpose nor its risks. I am sure this is unfair; but I do not have access to the sources cited.
And what is the word "vacillating" doing there? Maproom (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Agree. I've also redirected Mitochondrial replacement to Mitochondrial disease#Management and prevention. 86.134.200.29 (talk) 10:01, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Trimmed 86.134.200.29 (talk) 16:29, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

New review articles on human population genetics based on studies of ancient DNA

Two review articles in prominent journals about human population genetics are bringing together analysis of the many recent studies of human DNA, including DNA from ancient individuals.

  • Pickrell, Joseph K.; Reich, David (September 2014). "Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA". Trends in Genetics. 30 (9): 377–389, 378. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2014.07.007. PMC 4163019. PMID 25168683. However, the data also often contradict models of population replacement: when two distinct population groups come together during demographic expansions the result is often genetic admixture rather than complete replacement. This suggests that new types of models – with admixture at their center – are necessary for describing key aspects of human history ([14–16] for early examples of admixture models).

Earlier studies of this issue were based on more limited samples (fewer genes, and fewer human individuals from fewer regions and only recent times). As more samples of more genes from more individuals from more places and times are gathered, the molecular evidence is making it increasingly clear that human beings have been moving back and forth across the Earth's surface and mixing genes over long distances ever since their earliest ancestors moved out of the human homeland in Africa. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:50, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

CDKN2A disambiguation page

Over at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links, we're having trouble disambiguating links to CDKN2A. It isn't apparent from context whether they should go to p16 or p14arf. Would it be possible for someone to go through the articles on the "What links here" page and correct the links appropriately? Otherwise, if CDKN2A should have an article of its own then some more information could be added and the {{Letter-NumberCombDisambig}} tag could be removed. Nick Number (talk) 14:33, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Differentiation of genetic diversity, variability, variation and variance

The following articles currently exist:

In addition, "Genetic variance" previously redirected to genetic diversity, but I made it into a disambiguation page for these three articles. It would be wonderful if an expert in the topic would make it clear what the differences between these topics are, either within each article or in a separate article (similar to the introduction to genetics article). "Genetic variance" could remain a disambiguation page, be made into a separate article, or be made a redirect to an appropriate article. If it is made into a redirect, hopefully it will have an explanation for the redirect near the top of the article, such as an alternative name. Finally, if "genetic variance" is to remain a disambiguation page, it should have appropriate descriptions of each topic. Currently, it only lists the articles.

Before I posted to this talk page (I was greatly delayed), an editor used a template to encourage the creation of a broad topic article on the disambiguation page. I am fine with whatever people think is best. Thank you very much, Kjkolb (talk) 05:25, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

A bibliography including current textbooks on genetics that I maintain in Wikipedia user space may be helpful for finding sources to distinguish these terms and to see how they are treated in books and articles about genetics. Some of the sources are review articles that you may be able to see just by following links. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 19:47, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ACF7

Dear genetics experts: Here's an old AfC submission which will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Right now, ACF7 is a redirect to MACF1, and is tagged as being a synonym of this. If this is true, is there information in the draft which should be added to the MACF1 article? Or is this a separate topic that should have its own article? —Anne Delong (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the content of this article was already merged into MACF1, so I think we can let the stale draft go. --Mark viking (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Mark viking, for finding that. Since it was the same editor who did the merge, there's no need to redirect the draft, so I deleted it as you suggested. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Bulked segregant analysis

Fullwoodenjacket (talk · contribs) has created Draft:Bulked segregant analysis as part of a school assignment and has submitted it for review. Looks good to me as a stub, but biology isn't my forte. The topic has some coverage at Doubled_haploidy#Bulked_segregant_analysis_(BSA), but if it's notable enough for an independent article, I'd like to send it into the mainspace. Just wanted to see if anyone had any input regarding that. Thanks! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 06:00, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It looks competent to me, and worthy of article status. Maproom (talk) 18:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I concur, the article is a reasonable stub. "Bulked segregant analysis" gets over 9,400 hits on GScholar and shows many articles devoted to BSA and its variants. Definitely a notable topic. --Mark viking (talk) 19:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
@Maproom: @Mark viking: Thank you guys - I've gone ahead and pushed it to the mainspace. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 22:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Moroccan genetics

Inexperienced users are editing and edit-warring over this article. It needs a quality check and involvment of experienced users to sort thing out. (Please don't block the editors as they are new). Iselilja (talk) 02:27, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Template:Y-DNA G

I just made this edit to remove Template:Y-DNA G from Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls, but I am out of my league with regards to the subject matter, so I would appreciate it if someone could have a look to see if the content is correct. Thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Mutated genes

There is currently a discussion going on on how to categorize genes. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 November 25#Category:Genes mutated in mice. Input from interested partticipants in this project is welcome. --Randykitty (talk) 02:01, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Launch of WikiProject Wikidata for research

Hi, this is to let you know that we've launched WikiProject Wikidata for research in order to stimulate a closer interaction between Wikidata and research, both on a technical and a community level. As a first activity, we are drafting a research proposal on the matter (cf. blog post). Your thoughts on and contributions to that would be most welcome! Thanks, -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

About Draft:ZNF691

Hi all,
This draft is up for WP:G13 deletion. Unlike Canarium odontophyllum, a draft that was also up for WP:G13 that I moved into article-space, the science here is way, way beyond me. Should this be deleted? Moved into article-space? Re-directed to something else about human genetics? Some other outcome?
Your opinions about this would be greatly appreciated. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:59, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I can understand the science in the draft.
It is about a genuine subject, and does not have POV problems.
It is missing a lead. This could easily be remedied.
It does not start by saying what this protein does (and I don't think it explains this anywhere in the article). It should: see e.g. Alcohol dehydrogenase, which says what those proteins do in the first sentence of the article.
Most of it is far too specialised, particularly the Domains and motifs section. Such sections, with their explanation of the methodology used, are not suitable for Wikipedia.
Overall, I believe that this is not an encyclopedia article about a protein (if it were, it would belong in article space). It is a research paper, which should have been submitted to a suitable journal, not to Wikipedia. Maproom (talk) 10:32, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 November 25#Category:Genes mutated in mice

This discussion was just closed as keep. Unfortunately, very few people participated in the discussion and none seemed to be hampered by much knowledge about genetics. I find the distinction between "mouse genes" and "mutated mouse genes" untenable. If this distinction is being made for other species, too, then perhaps we should re-think the whole "genes" category tree. --Randykitty (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Genetics to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the Tool Labs tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 01:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Please help evaluate a draft submitted to AFC review

Please assess the acceptability of Draft:Single-cell DNA template strand sequencing. I'm not well versed in the minutiae of genetics, but it looks like a reasonable article to me - however it has no wikilinks to other pages so please also help to add relevant ones. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:44, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Enzyme for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.--Jarodalien (talk) 07:03, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/International Society for Forensic Genetics

Dear genetics experts: Here's an old AfC submission which will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is this a notable organization which should have an encyclopedia article?—Anne Delong (talk) 16:56, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I took a look at Google and PubMed and I found very few secondary hits. It seems to be a legit international organization, has regular conferences, a journal, publications, and addresses problems regarding the nomenclature, the definition of loci and alleles, population genetics and reporting methods. I DO NOT know the influence it has in the international forensic community, or if it is indeed used to set related international standards. It may be so, but I could not tell. IF the article was to be rescued, I would delete 90% of it, as it seems mostly self-promotion of individuals working there. My gut feeling is burn it. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, BatteryIncluded. I agree about the promotional aspect, and I was prepared to address that issue, but the references are not linked on line and I don't have the knowledge to judge whether they are reliable and appropriate. Since you didn't find much, I will leave the draft to be deleted unless someone else here decides to take it on.—Anne Delong (talk) 02:10, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Gene cluster article

Eight months ago, I wrote

In mid-March, two students announced on the talk page of the Gene cluster article, that they were planning to improve the article, as a college project. They requested other editors not to edit the article until their project was assessed, om May 7th. They then made many changes to the article, adding a lot of new material.
Other editors praised their efforts. I criticised them, as I believed they were incorporating errors and misunderstandings into the article. They accepted some of my criticisms, and made some corrections.
Their deadline is now a week past, and I assume that their project is over, though they and their professor have given no feedback on it. I believe that they have made many improvements to the article, most notably the addition of material about Hox genes and the Homeobox family. But I also believe that some of the errors they introduced are still there, and should be removed.
However, I believe that I am not the best person to clear up the errors. While I believe I am technically competent to do it, I feel some "commitment" to the article, which must be a bad thing. I would prefer another editor to take a lead here. I have already stated many of my views on the errors, on the article's talk page, and can provide further details if asked. Maproom (talk) 11:19, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

No-one responded (and today, coincidentally, my request was archived). I am planning to work on the article myself soon. I shall copy this to its talk page.

While the students made many improvements to the article, they added a long section on formation, discussing various theories about the origin of gene clusters. But this is absurd; the origin of gene clusters (by duplication and divergence) was known in 1972, and is not in doubt. This is acknowledged in the second sentence of the article "A gene cluster is part of a gene family": The gene family article starts "A gene family is a set of several similar genes, formed by duplication of a single original gene."

I will replace the long "formation" section by a much shorter historical section, mentioning the various pre-1970 conjectures. Maproom (talk) 11:01, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

 Done Maproom (talk) 16:08, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

A thorough review of the gene article

Transcluded from Talk:Gene/Review

To WP:MCB, WP:GEN, WP:BIOL and WP:EB

The gene article gets 50,000 views per month but has been de-listed as a featured article since 2006. Given the success of the recent blitz on the enzyme article, I thought I'd suggest spending a couple of weeks seeing if we can get it up to a higher standard. I'm going to start with updating some of the images. If you'd like to help out on the article, it'd be great to see you there. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 09:49, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

It appears the main reason gene was delisted as a GA was sourcing (see Talk:Gene/GA1). The following free textbook is probably sufficient to document most basic facts about genes:
a second one is even more relevant, but unfortunately not freely accessed:
I will start working on this as I find time. Boghog (talk) 17:58, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt on this! I see I did do some work here back in the day, but not enough. Looks like a typical large-but-untended wiki article - bloated up with random factoids with no attention to the flow of the article. I'm pretty busy for this week and out of town next week, but I'll try to give it some attention. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
I'll probably go through and make all the necessary MOS tweaks for FA status to the article within the next week. Too preoccupied with other articles at the moment to make any substantive content/reference changes though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 03:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Glossary

Snooping around I encountered Template:Genetics glossary, I don't know it's backstory, but it is a rather cleaver idea for a template in my opinion. I partially reckon it might go well under the first image in place or the second image depicting DNA, which conceptually is a tangent. I am not sure, hence my asking. --Squidonius (talk) 21:47, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Including a glossary could be useful, but I think it should be concise and tailored specifically for this article. Currently {{Genetics glossary}} contains 22 entries and some of the definitions are quite lengthy. A shorter glossary, closer to the size of {{Transcription factor glossary}} or {{Restriction enzyme glossary}}, IMHO would be more effective. Another option is to transclude the {{Genetics sidebar}} which in turn links to {{Genetics glossary}}. Boghog (talk) 06:38, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
...could also just transclude a collapsed version - provides the full set of terms and takes up little space. If people need a glossary, they can expand it. Glossaries probably shouldn't be expanded by default unless there's a lot of free space along the right side of the page between level 2 sections (i.e., horizontal line breaks), since images and tables should take precedence. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 07:25, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Collapsed or not collapsed, {{Genetics glossary}} is still way too long. Glossaries should be restricted to key terms with short definitions that can quickly be scanned while reading the rest of the article. IMHO, a long glossary defeats its purpose. Furthermore an uncollapsed glossary is more likely be read and if kept short, no need to collapse. Boghog (talk) 08:30, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough. Might as well make a new one since it's not referenced anyway; imo, glossaries should cite sources, preferably another glossary, because it's article content. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 08:39, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, apparently I added a bunch of stuff to that template awhile back, but don't remember it at all. It appears to be a subset of the article genetics glossary. (I'm not really sure we need both.) I agree that the template is way too long, and as constructed is hard to ctrl-F for a term.
I suggest just linking to the MBC glossary as a "reference". I would consider this kind of thing as a summary analogous to the lead paragraphs; no need for a clutter of little blue numbers. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:47, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

References

I'm planning on adding some more Molecular Biology of the Cell references to the article using {{rp}} to specify chapter sections. I went to the MBOC 4th ed. online page but I can find no way of searching by page number, chapter, section or anything else. Any ideas on how to specify specific sections as is possible for Biochemistry 5th ed. online? Alternatively, maybe there's a more easily refernced online textbook for general citations. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 11:30, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I had the same train of thought here on the regular talk page. How about something like this? Uses {{sfn}} to include links to individual sections as notes. Of course, now they're separate from the rest of the references, but maybe it's not a bad idea to distinguish 'basic stuff you can find in a textbook' from 'specific results you need to consult the literature for'. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
You're right, I missed that. I agree that it's actually a good way to format it. Having a separate list that indicates the significance of the references is useful. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 08:06, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
I am not a big fan of {{sfn}} templates. They are more complicated and harder to maintain. Plus they don't directly address the problem of searching Molecular Biology of the Cell. What seems to work is to search for the chapter or subchapter titles in quotes. For example search for "DNA and Chromosomes" provides a link to the introduction of chapter 4. Then one can reference the chapter or subchapter number with {{rp}}. I am busy this week but should have more time this weekend to work on this. Boghog (talk) 12:21, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
I mis-described my own suggestion; it's actually {{efn}} (not that that's better). I like your method better from an aesthetic and maintenance point of view, but the problem is that giving a reader a reference to "chapter 4" is less useful if there's no obvious way to get to chapter 4 from the book's table of contents page. I don't see a way to provide separate links for each chapter/section without splitting up the references in the reference list. We could use {{rp}} like this, but I think the links police won't like that. Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
OK, I now see what you mean. The choice is between {{efn}} and in-line external links and {{efn}} is the lesser of two evils. One other possibility is to append the chapter external links to the citation:
or have separate citations for each chapter where only the |chapter= and |chapterurl= parameters differ:
Boghog (talk) 18:47, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
My first reaction to your 'appended links' idea was that we shouldn't create our own linked pseudo-TOC given the publisher's apparent desire not to have a linked TOC hosted by the organization they actually licensed the content to. But all the other ideas do essentially the same thing, so that's a bit silly. I think I like that idea in combination with {{rp}} chapter labels best, as it's least intrusive in the text, makes clear how many citations go to a general reference, and doesn't require a separate list or potentially fragile formatting. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:49, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I've not done much non-standard reference citation so I'll wait until you've done a couple so that I can see the format in context before doing any more. The ones I added yesterday shouldn't be too difficult to reformat. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 12:24, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

You're the one currently doing the work, so I think that means you get to decide :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

MBOC references

Article

Genes[2]: 2  are numerous[2]: 4  and useful[2]: 4.1 

References

  1. ^ ≠
  2. ^ a b c Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P (2002). Molecular Biology of the Cell (Fourth ed.). New York: Garland Science. ISBN 978-0-8153-3218-3.
Glossary
Ch 2: Cell Chemistry and Biosynthesis
2.1: The Chemical Components of a Cell
Ch 4: DNA and Chromosomes
4.1: The Structure and Function of DNA
4.2: Chromosomal DNA and Its Packaging in the Chromatin Fiber
Ch 6: How Cells Read the Genome: From DNA to Protein
6.1: DNA to RNA
6.2: RNA to Protein
Ch 7: Control of Gene Expression

So {{rp}} labels the chapter number but does not provide any easy link to the actual information. Therefore it's combined with a list of chapter links. the benefit is that the {{rp}} template is relatively easy to maintain and the list of chapter links doesn't require maintainance and places all the MBOC links together. As stated above, there's basically no way to avoid linking individually to chapters if we want to cite MBOC. I'll finish building the chapter list over the next couple of days. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 01:29, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I've finished adding MBOC references up to section 3 (gene expression). Also, whoever originally wrote the gene expression section of the article really liked semicolons! T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 10:51, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
Looks great, I like the collapsible box! I can't find it at the moment, though - IIRC there is somewhere an agreement not to use collapsed boxes for references for accessibility reasons. I don't see it in WP:ACCESSIBILITY so I could be misremembering, and since the box contains links and not the reference note itself, it's probably fine. Just wanted to mention it in case someone recognized the issue. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:50, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
@Opabinia regalis and Evolution and evolvability: The guideline is MOS:COLLAPSE, which states "...boxes that toggle text display between hide and show, should not conceal article content, including reference lists ... When scrolling lists or collapsible content are used, take care that the content will still be accessible on devices that do not support JavaScript or CSS." I checked this article on my phone, a mid-2011 model, and that entire box just doesn't appear at all using the default mobile view. I tried setting the template parameter expand=true so the box is expanded by default but that made no difference. Maybe better to change to a bulleted or indented list? Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 10:50, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
@Adrian J. Hunter: Well spotted - It's really irritating when templates don't work properly on mobiles! I've changed the MBOC list to be wrapped in {{Hidden begin}} + {{Hidden end}}, which renders properly on phones (default expanded). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 12:31, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Yep, that works – thanks! Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 13:23, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Annotated image policy

If anyone has an interest in interactive annotated images, I've made a post on WP:IUP to discuss when wikilinked image annotation is appropriate. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 02:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Showcase

Why is Showcase empty?
aGastya  ✉ Dicere Aliquid :) 23:13, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Draft:CXorf67

I've copied the following post that might be of interest over from WT:BIOL. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 10:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Please could someone with knowledge in biology/proteins look at this draft article- due to my lack of subject knowledge, I cannot determine if it's notable enough for Wikipedia or not. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the notability of this one. It's an open reading frame, which has the potential to encode a protein, but not always. They are thousands of open reading frames and most of them are not notable. Of the references currently in the draft, all are reliable but 1-5 are only databases with basic information and not enough to indicate notability. Reference 6 mentions 753 lysine ubiquitylation sites on 471 proteins and makes not specific mentions of CXorf67. Reference 7 goes into some detail but only when its liked to MBTD1 as a fusion gene. Reference 8 is about a large section of chromosome X in general and makes no specific mention of CXorf67. I don't think there is enough significant coverage of this in the literature to distinguish it from the many other open reading frames and establish notability. Sarahj2107 (talk) 13:08, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Sarahj2107. There are thousands of ORF and if they code for something, we don't know which protein this one codes for. Although it seems good and standard cell biology research, it is very preliminary and has not reached notability for Wikipedia standards. Also, quoting databases as references is useless because it requires to know the sequence of the oligos input and of ample interpretation. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 17:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Ref 5 doesn't work and the other refs to databases aren't ideal, since the database content can change and many of them are not versioned in a way that's helpful. That said, I'm inclined to accept these as they come in. I can't see any value in trying to develop a WP:ORF as notability guidelines for open reading frames. IMO if an annotated gene is verifiable it can have a wiki page. (BTW, the mention in ref 6 is in the supplement; it's just an entry in the spreadsheet.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:37, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I fail to see the notability of an uncharacterized protein with unknown function. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 00:35, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (breeds)

Please see Wikipedia:Notability (breeds) for a draft of a future proposal for a notability guideline on domestic animal breeds. As your wiki-project is involved in this area, I am dropping off an invite to the discussion. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability (breeds). Thanks! JTdaleTalk~ 16:17, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Genome engineering v. Genome editing? Distinction within Genetic engineering?

The pages for Genome engineering and Genome editing seem to overlap quite a bit, with no apparent rationale for the distinction, if any.

I gather that Genetic engineering is a broader topic than Genome engineering, but the distinction is not apparent (to me) in the articles. For example, the intro sentences:

  • Genetic engineering: "Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct manipulation of an organism's genome using biotechnology."
  • Genome engineering: "Genome engineering refers to the strategies and techniques developed in recent years for the targeted, specific modification of the genetic information – or genome – of living organisms."

Perhaps add these to your list of things to look at? I don't have the expertise to do that myself. Thanks! -- Bassomatic (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you that they look like they could be merged. I'm currently busy with the gene article but I'll have a look at it when I'm done. For the moment I've added a merger discussion section and merger tags to the articles. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 00:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

This is slightly tangential, but should there be an article on epigenetic engineering (e.g., this summary paper which discusses another paper where the authors made use of engineered transcription factors and modulate transcriptional activation/repression through histone modification) at some point, or would that topic be better suited for coverage in the genetic engineering article? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

CRISPR-Cas9

CRISPR-Cas9 is getting a lot of attention now. I think it would be beneficial if all the information on this, and the lawsuit [13] between mit and ucb, was in one place, perhaps in an article on the technique itself, and not scattered between articles. articles containing pieces of it are Jennifer Doudna, Gene drive, David Baltimore, CRISPR, and Cas9. this is a little beyond my scope, otherwise i might be bold and create it. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:18, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Chinese study using CRISPR on human embryo

Protein & Cell published a paper on CRISPR/Cas9 use for gene therapy in human embryos. An article in Nature states the paper looks "set to reignite the debate on human-embryo editing" - and the experiments are facing a backlash

Discussion on ITN: Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates § Human embryos genetically modified for the first time

-- Aronzak (talk) 23:43, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

There's also an excellent Ars Technica article on it. More generally, the genetic engineering, genome engineering, gene targeting and CRISPR pages need a bit of an update. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 00:21, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
SEE below for my request for a separate article on crisper-cas9.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Help with a draft article?

I've declined a draft article that was written by an IP over sourcing issues, Draft:Brain Transcriptome Database (BrainTx) Project. It's a little too good to just leave in the draftspace, so I thought I'd ask here if anyone could help find sourcing. I'd do it myself but I'm really not familiar with genetics beyond the high school level, as interesting as they are. This also needs some slight tweaking for terminology since it does read a little too technical. I was just going to move on to the next AfC draft but I'm afraid of this languishing in the AfC space (since a lot of editors tend to abandon their drafts) and then getting G13'd. It just seems a little too interesting to not try to give it a little bit of extra help. I figure if it doesn't pass then it doesn't pass, but I figured that at the very least I could make you guys aware of it since you'd obviously be more likely to know where to find sourcing for this that I wouldn't. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:18, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Selection listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Selection to be moved to Selection (genetics). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 02:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Category renaming proposed

Category renaming proposed at here. About 25 categories included in this category, renaming from, for example, Category:Genes on chromosome 1 → Category:Genes on human chromosome 1 is proposed (adding "human" to category name). Although I think there are no need to explain the reason of renaming to the members of this project, chromosome number which contains certain gene varies in species-to-species. So we need to specify species. --Was a bee (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

While the basic proposal here (to rename the subcats of Category:Genes by human chromosome) looks sound to me, I have raised questions in the CFD discussion regarding the categories for X and Y chromosomes and for MT chromosomes. Some informed input would be appreciated. Thanks! Cgingold (talk) 11:30, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

CDKN2A disambiguation page

I previously posted this in October 2014, but didn't receive a response. It is still an issue.

Over at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links, we're having trouble disambiguating links to CDKN2A. It isn't apparent from context whether they should go to p16 or p14arf. Would it be possible for someone to go through the articles on the "What links here" page and correct the links appropriately? Otherwise, if CDKN2A should have an article of its own then some more information could be added and the {{Letter-NumberCombDisambig}} tag could be removed. Nick Number (talk) 14:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

GScholar produces 29,900 hits for the term CDKN2A. This gene plays a role in cancer and looks quite notable. Looking at the history, there was some information on added to the page, then reverted as spam, but it didn't look like spam to me. This single gene encodes both proteins. There is also a p19ARF homolog in mice. --Mark viking (talk) 17:35, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Mark viking: So you'd support restoring some of the deleted content and making it into a full article about the gene rather than a disambiguation page? Nick Number (talk) 19:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I'd support this. A quick search reveals the secondary sources: a review article, a page from the NIH, and a section from the NCI. GeneCards has some good information and there are quite a few references at the WikiGenes article. --Mark viking (talk) 20:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Mark viking: Ok, I've converted it to a stub using those references. If you have a chance, please look it over. I am not a geneticist, and AP Bio was a long time ago, so I may have misstated something. Nick Number (talk) 15:45, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Boghog: You've muddied the waters a bit with this edit. Per the previous discussion above, the stub article was created for the gene alone because there are two different proteins which the gene codes for, and the term CDKN2A was ambiguous when referring to them. Now I'm not really qualified to discuss this subject in any detail, but is there a way the lead can be rephrased to avoid confusion? Nick Number (talk) 23:03, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, I have turned the stub back into a gene specific page. The vast majority of Gene Wiki articles are about both the protein and the gene that encodes that protein. This is because the function of the gene is so intertwined with the protein, it normally does not make sense to separate the two into different articles. In this case we have two different proteins encoded by the same gene and each protein is independently notable. So in this case it makes sense to have two separate protein articles. Please note that there is significant discussion about the gene in each of the protein articles (and there should be), so the division is not clean. Hence to minimize overlap, I think the stub should not be significantly expanded. Boghog (talk) 05:04, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Great, thank you. Nick Number (talk) 14:43, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Pronucleus

Dear editors,

I am new to this editing function of Wiki, however I had a query regarding the pronucleus description.

Specifically I have noticed that the Pronucleus page of Wiki discusses that the Pronucleus is haploid, then fusion occurs making the single cells zygote diploid. Then the cell immediately divides again, which would make the 2 cell stage contain two haploid cells. I have read an alternative explanation in 2 other sources, one quite good: Langmans Medical Embryology Pg 39, and another online at http://ww.embryology.ch/anglais/dbefruchtung/zygote03.html. These sources describe how the pronuclei double their DNA to achieve a diploid state prior to fusion. Then the single celled zygote is 4n and divides to make the 2 cell stage contain 2 diploid cells. Perhaps this is a minor technicality, perhaps we are all saying the same thing essentially, however I just thought a little extra detail couldn't go astray?

I welcome feedback to this curiosity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawk-handsaw (talk • contribs) 07:16, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood something. The cell does not "immediately divide again", though it probably divides again soon - a zygote doesn't have much else to do besides metabolise and grow into an embryo. And when this division does occur, it is not just a separation of the chromosomes, it is a mitosis, which doubles the total number of chromosomes present. Maproom (talk) 07:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for taking the time to read and evaluate this. If you would be so kind as to go to this website and perhaps tell me whether this is a good source: http://www.embryology.ch/anglais/dbefruchtung/zygote01.html. It states: The DNA must be duplicated before each commencing cell division so it can be distributed among the daughter cells. In an impregnated oocyte this happens for every chromosome set – the one from the father and the one from the mother – each in a separate pronucleus. The time needed for the duplication of the DNA amounts to roughly 12-18 hours. During this time span, the two pronuclei also get closer to each other spatially. I also read the same thing in quite a trusted text book Langmans Medical Embryology. Thanks for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawk-handsaw (talk • contribs) 08:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Interesting! I'd always envisaged all the chromosomes combining before S phase of the first mitosis, but according to the source you've linked, S phase actually occurs in each pronucleus separately before the membranes of the pronuclei break down and the chromosomes come together. The source is specifically about human embryology, so I don't know whether this is how it occurs in other animals. I don't think this actually contradicts anything currently written at Pronucleus, which says "The male and female pronuclei don't fuse, although their genetic material does. Instead, their membranes dissolve, leaving no barriers between the male and female chromosomes. Their chromosomes can then combine and become part of a single diploid nucleus in the resulting embryo, containing a full set of chromosomes." Nothing in this description states whether DNA replication (S phase) occurs before or after the pronuclear membranes dissolve. "Diploid" can mean 2n2C or 2n4C. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 09:34, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it amazing! I mean the implications of this could be very interesting. Firstly it may help us understand parthenogenesis in other animals, it may even mean that parthenogenesis could be manipulated in humans, but most importantly I think is that it might shed light on what prompts the DNA replication phase of mitosis. Eg how does the nucleus of 4n know to simply divide, rather than duplicate and then divide. It could teach us a lot about the prompts for DNA synthesis etc. Of course it may also just be meaningless information. "Yes we get to 4n, who cares how we get there." Either way I think that the wiki page would make a reasonable person think that the DNA replication happens after the pronucleus combine. Which may not be the case. Wiki states: 'Their chromosomes can then combine and become part of a single diploid nucleus in the resulting embryo, containing a full set of chromosomes.' Yes this is true, but this would not happen until the embryo consists of 2 cells. I think in all honesty this is such a minor detail, however, surely we should try to make wiki as clear as possible? More and more people are using Wiki as an information source. Again thank you for your conversation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawk-handsaw (talk • contribs) 10:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I see that my first answer to you was mistaken. I thought that the chromosome division which precedes mitosis counted as part of the mitosis. It doesn't. Maproom (talk) 11:08, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thats interesting, I too thought that mitosis included chromosome division, but you're right it doesn't. I'm still curious as to which version of events is correct. Is the DNA duplicated after fusion or in the pronuclei before fusion? If anyone can confirm or refute this I'd be much appreciated. I have a professor looking into this as well however he won't be able to respond for a few days. If it is true, do you think that details like these should be added to the wiki page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawk-handsaw (talk • contribs) 11:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Definition of a Gene

As the Gene article is about to be GA reviewed, it might be useful to check that there is consensus on the definitions (Talk:Gene#Definitions). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 01:15, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Without looking at the current definition – gene is a vague word, like "thing". It can be used to mean "locus, or "allele", or in various other ways. Maproom (talk) 07:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
The dogma in the 1990s was "one gene, one protein." If it is not translated and transcribed, is it a gene? BatteryIncluded (talk) 01:23, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Translation is certainly not a requirement. We talk about rRNA genes, tRNA genes, microRNA genes, and so on. Though I can't think of anything I'd call a gene that's not either transcribed or involved in regulating transcription. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 02:51, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


Wikipedia:WikiProject Unique Identifiers

So, there's a new project which may be of interest to some here. It arises out of Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#UID_interface_to_Wikipedia, a proposal to make wikipedia articles available by their UID - for instance by their UNIPROT number. Umm. For reasons which should be all to obvious to anyone interested in computational aspects of genetics. And those two pages are all I have to show you, but I live in hope of input from you to take it all further. --

99 Lives Cat Genome Sequencing Project, at the U. of Missouri

Homepage: http://felinegenetics.missouri.edu/99lives

Definitely notable, given this level of Google News coverage. I'm working on updating the Manx cat article with info about the loosely affiliated Manx Cat Genome Project, so maybe someone else can take on the larger organization.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:26, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Editors may perhaps be interested in Talk:Desirable genetic trait#Merge proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Now probably moot – Desirable genetic trait has (rightly, in my view) been deleted. Maproom (talk) 08:05, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Correct. Thanks anyway. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Czechs

Hello all--I know very little about genetics, but I do know that this Y-DNA haplogroup stuff has been contentious in various articles. With that in mind, I would like to ask some of you to look at this edit: Concus Cretus and ThecentreCZ seem to be getting into it a bit, without the mutual courtesy of talk page discussion. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 15:50, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

That is historical revisionism of Czech National Revival and triggers

as a German-Czech editor and his purposeful look on genetics studies, which is due to compromises at discussions on other articles purely false, and even is not the main indicator of main attributes of any nations.

--ThecentreCZ (talk) 16:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Missing information on RNA expression pattern

On the Template:Infobox gene there is an "RNA expression pattern", which seems rather informative – see GLUT1 for an example. However, this is currently missing an link to an article on Wikipedia describing exactly what this is, and how to read it. Please, can someone more knowledgeable than me (or rather much more knowledgeable) start such an article? Tony Mach (talk) 15:56, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Addressed over at Template_talk:Infobox_gene#Missing_information_on_RNA_expression_pattern. Best, Andrew Su (talk) 05:19, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Greetings WikiProject Molecular Biology/Genetics/Archive 2 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 18:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Mitochondrial chromosome

In the Template:Chromosomes, we can read the list of human chromosomes, with 22 autosomes, and 2 sex chromosomes + the pseudoautosomal region. Do you think we should add the mitochondrial chromosome? This might be done by adding a new line, entitled Mitochondrial chromosome, and linking to mitochondrial DNA. Manudouz (talk) 14:53, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Please help out merging genome editing & genome engineering

At Talk:Genome engineering#Merge discussion it was decided that genome editing & genome engineering should be merged. However in November User:Evolution and evolvability asked for a qualified academic to help out with the merge. Maybe someone in here can lend a hand? Please just go ahead and properly merge both articles so that no content is lost.

I guess as there's also a genetic engineering article the most appropriate target to merge to would be genome engineering? What do you think would be the more accurate or popular term?

--Fixuture (talk) 16:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

To clarify, I think that genome editing & genome engineering can safely be merged, however genetic engineering is quite a different topic. The genome edit/eng pages both pertain to insertion and removal of multiple genes in a genome, usually in a targeted manner (a process that has been traditionally relatively difficult). Genetic engineering is a much broader term that includes simpler techniques such as addition of plasmids to bacteria, and is often used to indicate the addition of a single gene to a genome. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 00:38, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability: Thanks for the explanation. I know it's different topic - or from what I understood at least a superordinate one. What I meant to say is that by that naming convention the target of the page should be genome engineering. But I don't know what the best target for the merge would be. e.g. while I think "editing" is a term more often used in common language and better understood it doesn't really fit it as it's not the usual type of editing as one knows from IT and it doesn't really encompass additions, removals as well as the term "engineering". --Fixuture (talk) 18:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Ah, now I'm with you. "Genome engineering" is the older term, e.g. for adding and optimising whole biochemical pathways into bacteria. "Genome editing" has become popular in the last few years with the advent of comparatively easy nuclease tools (TALON, CRISPR etc). "Editing" has also been used, partly to distance the technology from the public understanding issues in which genetic engineering has become mired. I think "Genome engineering" should probably be the main page, since it's still by far the more commonly used term term. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 00:23, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

To do list comments

To do list 

   Ensure that all of these categories are within Category:Genetics
   Confirm that the hierarchy of Category:Genetics and List of basic genetics topics are what a typical reader would expect. An example Genetics hierarchy is here.

Problems:

1. clicking "these categories" gives a 404 Not Found response

2. in "List of basic genetics topics"

"craniosynostosis" is not something typical reader would expect, IMHO
"Jurassic Park (genetics of)" doesn't exist
"List of human genetic disorders" seriously, why not just link to the online medelian inheritance in man?

instead of trying to maintain such a list independently? https://www.omim.org/

"non-directiveness" doesn't exist
"patent" If somebody wanted to create a page about biological patents, sure, but not just the generic patent page Same for "technology transfer".

DennisPietras (talk) 04:21, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Genetics article ratings are a mess, IMHO

I'm a new user with considerable experience in genetics. I consulted the table "Genetics articles by quality and importance" on Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics to find which articles I might help to improve. I would say, IMHO, that the ratings are fubar and should just be ignored, except for the notion I'm entertaing that there must be some way to actually fix the table. Does anybody actually know how to do that? Thanks, Drdfp (talk) 05:25, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Assessments of of article quality and priority are performed by individual editors, often members of wikiprojects. You are welcome to improve those assessments, according to Wikipedia practice, as you see fit. A rough guide to article class is at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment and of article priority is at Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Priority_of_topic. In what way have you found these assessments to be a mess and fubar? --Mark viking (talk) 05:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
Hi Drdfp! Always good to have now biologists join the community. Keeping both the quality and importance ratings up to date is certainly important. The importance ranking of pages tends not to change much over time (although sometimes topics change importance, e.g CRISPR). However, the quality scores do need constant re-evaluation as the information in the pages evolve. Both importance and quality for every page can be updated by any editor. The lower quality levels have quite broad guidelines, whereas "Good" and "Featured" articles have to pass a peer-review process. The Molecular and Cell biology wikiproject has a good summary here. The summary table then automatically updates itself. Is it the importance or quality scores that you reckon need a review? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 08:39, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
@Mark viking:2 extreme examples of how fubar they are. There are 2044 unassessed articles listed! The central dogma article was rated start class until I changed it to A. That has been discussed on the talk page for the central dogma. Apparently somebody else needs to review my rating, but since there are over 2,000 unassessed articles, I don't think a second review is going to be forthcoming anytime soon. At least now nobody looking to help improve a start-class article will need to look at the central dogma. I'm retired and developing a wikipediaddiction, so I'm going to try to assess articles and change ratings as I get time, but currently, that list is a mess. I've changed my username from Drdfp to DennisPietras (talk) 04:37, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
@Mark viking: I just read "alleles" and moved it from start class to B, because it isn't Crappy and it isn't worthy of an A. That way, somebody who might be interested in alleles but might be intimidated by the work of editing a start class article might more readily work on it. DennisPietras (talk) 04:59, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
@Mark viking: I just read autosome and don't know what to do with it. Very little discussion on the talk page. One person asked for suggestions for what to add. That question beats the heck out of me! I would make a few tiny edits, but why bother? It is rated as start-class. It is a short article, but so what? That shouldn't mean it stays forever as start-class. Comments? And to think that there are over 2000 unassigned articles. I won't live long enough to look at them... DennisPietras (talk) 05:16, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
@DennisPietras: It's great seeing you review the ratings. Even getting through the backlog is an important task, and reassessing the existing ones is just as vital. Autosome is definitely still start-class to my eye. It could do with some history, better organisation headings, some discussion&comparison of other organisms, some evolution info. Some articles (espec low-importance ones) can sit as start or C for ages, and often that's not too much of a problem.
Just a note, I think A class was basically phased out when FA and GA were brought it, so articles can't be above B class unless they've gone though GA or FA peer review. It might be worth either reducing central dogma back to B-class, or submitting it for GA review. I've adapted MCB's rating scale to be more relevant for genetics and added it here. Hope that's helpful. Deinitely worthwhile getting through some of the backlog that's built up! The main thing is consistency across the categories. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 05:57, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability and Mark viking:Re:autosomes: I understand that there are things that could be added. My thought would be to show how our chromosome 2 was derived from a fusion of 2 smaller chromosomes still seen in chimps, but that could be better discussed in an evolutionary background, IMHO. We could talk about the chromatin structure of autosomes, but there aleady is a page about that.... and on and on. Autosome to me could be a nearly finished B rated low importance article with more "see also" links. Re: A class phased out: and yet, there stands a row of one A class article, the central dogma, generated by me. Oh, the power! 8-) Maybe somebody will see that and think, "hmmm, maybe with a little effort this could become a GA article", and go for it. DennisPietras (talk) 00:35, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

How to organize the workforce

Folks, I'd like to see genetics articles get needed attention. I am going to throw out some suggestions and see if any stick. I'm a newbie, so this may be totally inappropriate, but whatcha gonna do, fire me?

1. Delete the "To do list" section. Has anybody but me ever commented on the links? Who is it that is responsible for eliminating things like "patent" from this project? Just do it.

2. Realize that there are about 100 people who have signed up for the project. I suggest that whoever is leading this project (if anyone?) compose a "ping list" (manually, if needed) of those users and send out a message asking each member to assess 20 of the 2044 unassessed articles over the next month. Explain how to do it. Explain that they are free to assess whatever articles they wish. If all goes well, by March we'll have a much better idea of what we are dealing with.

3. if all doesn't go well and there are still 1984 unassessed articles come March, just forget about the project. Seriously.

Note: I do NOT have the people skills to be a leader. If nominated, I will not campaign. If elected, I will not serve. DennisPietras (talk) 00:59, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I would attach little significance to who is "signed up".
When I first started to edit Wikipedia, I signed up for several projects, becasue they looked interesting, or because someone recommended them to me. I soon lost interest in most of them. I didn't unsign as I probably should have; and now I can't remember what they were. I think my behaviour is quite typical: I suspect most signed-up members of most projects have contributed nothing for years. Maproom (talk) 22:28, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
The todo list should ideally contain a general list of useful tasks that can be done by new members, but I agree, it's a neglected currently. WP:MCB has a more general 'Goals' section that performs a similar function. A slightly better metric of who is active in the WP:GEN community is this automated list. I agree that updating the rankings is highly useful, so happy to do my part to work though the backlog (although wikiprojects perform useful functions in addition to page rating). Most (all?) WikiProjects are non-hierarchical - they act like communal meeting places for editors with a particular interest to coordinate and update each other. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 02:01, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Heh, this is a big of a chicken-and-egg problem because of people like me who notice that the assessments are often dated and crappy, and therefore never bother to update assessments... ;) Good to see someone is interested in tackling the problem. If some of the articles have assessments from other projects that could be reasonably inherited, I believe there's a bot that will do that. I'll try to be less bad at this! Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:56, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
To help in the effort, I've also added the tracking log of all assessment changes to the WP:GEN statistics page! Should be nice to see what's getting reclassified. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 10:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

WikiBlame is great!

If I am using it properly, the first 2 topics on the to do list

Ensure that all of these categories are within Category:Genetics
Confirm that the hierarchy of Category:Genetics and List of basic genetics topics are what a typical reader would expect. An example Genetics hierarchy is here.

were added in May 2008 by a user, GregManninLB, who was not signed up on the list of participants at the time and is not now, as far as I can see. I'm deleting them. DennisPietras (talk) 19:11, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

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