Talk:DSCAM

DSCAM Article Editing
Hello there! I just wanted to introduce myself (Rexsmiley) along with a couple of other people (Sytae and Rmohsen1) to anyone who is currently watching/editing this DSCAM article page. The three of us are enrolled in an online Molecular Biology class through Johns Hopkins University. For a class assignment, we have selected this article to add more content and structure to further expand on DSCAM. Beginning now and continuing for approximately the next 5 weeks, we will be adding to the article and making several edits. The three of us are all first time wiki editors, so any feedback to help us improve would be great! Just wanted to give everyone the "heads up" that you will be seeing several edits in the weeks to come. Thanks! Rexsmiley (talk) 18:01, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey Susana! Great job adding some more content to the article!  Well done!! I have quite a bit of information that I have pulled from a few articles that I plan to add either today or tomorrow evening.  Just trying to organize it a bit before I put it in the article.  Again, great job!! :) Rexsmiley (talk) 18:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello DSCAM editors. I just wanted to let you know that I added the sections "DSCAM Gene", "Interactions" and "Clinical Significance" along with the content and citations to go along with them.  I may need some help aligning content with section headings.  More to come soon!  Thanks! Rexsmiley (talk) 00:04, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Final week mini-review
Hi, guys. Here's a final-week mini-review of your page. It is just a few random notes, that I jotted down while skimming the page, and is not intended as a comprehensive review.


 * "History/Discovery" - the history of the discovery is completely separate topic from the history of the gene (which starts with "The DSCAM protein structure is conserved"). Maybe this should be broken into two sections?  I'd think, two paragraphs, at least.
 * General comment: you should break the text up into more, smaller paragraphs.  That improves readability considerably.
 * "DSCAM Gene" section. The first sentence seems out of place:  "The second human DSCAM gene, DSCAML1, is located on chromosome band 11q23...".  First of all, what was the first human DSCAM gene?  Next, why are we talking about humans?  Also, why do you mention it's location -- how is that relevant.  In the very next sentence, you talk about "the most intriguing changes", which seems like a complete change of topic.  What is changing?  Changes relative to what?
 * What is a "binding epitope"? Terms like these should generally be introduced before they are used.
 * The table of homologs is good, but it needs an introduction I think. Right now it is sitting out there and looks out of place.
 * There are a fair number of grammatical errors in your article. One example, "Invertebrates do not have antibodies and relies", should be "rely".  Someone should do a quick grammar check.  You could cut-and-paste it into Word, for example, to do this.
 * For everything under "Functions", you could add more intra-wikipedia links. For example, to Pattern recognition receptor.
 * Also, everything from "Functions" on down, the level is too technical. Try to go slower with the technical terms, and to walk the reader along gently.  Pretend you are writing for a bright high-school student or freshman-year undergrad.

Klortho (talk) 01:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey Klortho! Thanks for the great review.  We will work this last week of the class on "cleaning up" the document and implementing your suggestions.  We also have some valuable comments from reviews from our classmates that we will incorporate.  Thanks again! ~Rex Rexsmiley (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Klortho! We will focus on editing the content of our article based on your recommendations this week. As Rex pointed out, we will incorporate suggestions from our classmates as well. Thank you! Sytae (talk) 17:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks Klortho! The final review is great for the final edit. :) Rmohsen1 (talk) 06:54, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Use of capitals and italics
There is some confusion in this article over the use of capital (upper case) letters and italics to designate genes and their products. While there are agreed conventions, unfortunately they differ somewhat between groups of organisms. However, generally gene symbols are italicised, while a gene product has the same symbol as the gene encoding it, but not italicised. Whether the gene is in capital letters depends on the animal or plant group. This site provides a useful entry point: http://www.gmb.org.br/nomenclature.html. I am no expert, and I should prefer someone with deeper knowledge of the conventions to tidy up the article. Dasyornis (talk) 00:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)