Talk:Genetic transformation

Suspected copyvio (resolved)
Text about tranformation ripped from here. Is it OK i wonder? http://nuke.scienceandus.com/Protocols/CaCl2bacterialcompetentcells/tabid/68/Default.aspx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.3.234.5 (talk) 13:34, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note. Looking at the history of this article, the sections that match the source you indicated were created by many editors over a long period of time.  So it looks as though the other website copied Wikipedia, and is a bit naughty for not acknowledging such.  By the way, if you find any other suspected copyright violations, the best place to report them is WP:SCV. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:34, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

un saludito a los in glichs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.255.254.153 (talk) 00:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Improving the History section
The history section in this article is very inadequate, compared to the importance of this discovery by Griffith and further conformation by Avery and McCarthy's experiment. This experiment has led into the understanding that DNA is a Genetic Material. Improving this is very necessary. I think that this experiment should be discussed with an associated diagram, explaining in detail about the S-strain and R-strain of Pneumococci and their lethality on mice. Then the use of "heat-killed" S-strain and live R-strain combined. Also further ellucidation is needed regarding Avery's experiment.

Also transformation is the basic principle behind Genetic Engineering. This article is direly in need of expansion. Please expand it. I will also contribute whenever I can. Proquence (talk) 10:29, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Mistake?
The article currently states "Transformation of eukaryotic cells in tissue culture is usually called transfection.". However, from my understanding and from the wikipedia article is that transfection is specifically the uptake of DNA into the cell, and not its incorporation into genomic DNA. This is inconsistent with "In molecular biology, transformation is the genetic alteration of a cell resulting from the uptake, genomic incorporation, and expression of foreign genetic material (DNA)." Wwood (talk) 22:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * My understanding is similar to yours, although if you google "define:transfection" you'll see that different groups use the term in different ways, which seems to be common with terms in molecular biology. I've changed the sentence  to be consistent with Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell, which is an extremely well-regarded textbook.  Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 00:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Where does this claim come from that Fred Griffith was developing vaccine?
The "History" section of this Wikipedia article says, "Transformation was first demonstrated in 1928 by Frederick Griffith, an English bacteriologist searching for a vaccine against bacterial pneumonia". Where was this indication—that Griffith was working on vaccine—published? I deleted this claim from Griffith's page months ago, because I find in no literature that he was looking for vaccine, which is applied science or, less euphemistically, engineering. I've found indications only that Griffith was interested in figuring out the basic science and epidemiology of pneumonia.

Kusername (talk) 06:26, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Why separation of competence and transformation?
I'm not sure why there are separate section for natural competence and natural transformation, since they are basically the same thing (competence is simply the readiness of the cell to allow transformation). Separating them will only cause confusion to those who are studying the subject, they therefore should be merged.

The page also needs reorganizing. Hzh (talk) 03:47, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


 * There are distinct and substantial bodies of research on natural competence and on the mechanism of transformation. I think all that's needed are clear cross-references between the two pages.Rosieredfield (talk) 01:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Planned major edit
This article is quite imbalanced. It has long sections on several specialized topics (the proposed DNA repair function for natural competence, the mechanism of DNA penetration in artificially competent E. coli) and little or nothing on others (the mechanisms of natural transformation in various bacteria, how incoming DNA becomes part of the chromosome). I run a research lab on natural competence and transformation, and I'm going to try to create improved versions of this page and the page on competence. See my sandbox (not yet but soon).Rosieredfield (talk) 03:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Later I'd welcome ideas about the best organization of the related material on (1) natural competence and (2) transformation in bacteria, (3) artificial competence and transformation in bacteria (and other cells), (4) transfection, (5) lateral gene transfer. Most importantly, should we merge natural competence and natural transformation in bacteria? Rosieredfield (talk) 23:31, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Transfection and lateral gene transfer are related subjects that have their own pages, so any in depth treatment are not necessary here, you just need to give an idea of the distinction between them. Natural competence and natural transformation are essentially the same topic, however, it all depends on what you intend to put in them, because one refers to a state the cell is in, the other a process.  At the moment the content of both can all be place under natural transformation, but if you have extra information that's appropriate for natural competence, then you can have them separate, if only to stop the sub-sections getting too big.


 * I would also say that we put natural transformation and artificial transformation into separate sections, and the mechanisms as sub-sections for both. The definitions can be a separate short sections preceding these two. You can have transformation in other cell types under a general heading, or you can have them separate from the bacterial one, it depends on how much information you want to add. When a section gets too bloated, it becomes harder to read.


 * For now, I would suggest something like this:


 * History
 * Definitions (including distinction from transfection etc.)
 * Natural transformation (if you have a lot of information on other cells, then this can be just a section on bacteria, and have a separate section for other cell types)
 * Natural competence (optional, depending on how much information you intend to add)
 * Mechanism of transformation
 * Artificial transformation
 * Artifical competence (optional)
 * Methods and mechanism
 * Practical aspects of transformation in molecular biology (but can be merged as a subsection under artificial transformation) Hzh (talk) 16:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Axiao12, Fouadrabah. Peer reviewers: Fouadrabah.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Transformation (genetics)
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Transformation (genetics)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Alberts": From Homologous recombination:  From DNA:  From Genetic recombination:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 09:06, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Gram positive and negative
Please note that Gram is more often capitalized in science papers -, a minority of papers use the lower case form (probably around a quarter by looking at the first 100 papers listed), but it is a general policy of Wikipedia to use term in the way it is most-commonly used. Hzh (talk) 23:00, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * On both pages of these has been added an orthographic note which I was unaware of. And on talk page of gram-negative bacteria there are two related sections. As it would seem to be a question of choice, and myself and other editors choose to use lower case it would seem in order, to have consistency over all relevant pages. --Iztwoz (talk) 05:42, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 31 May 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Polyamorph (talk) 19:26, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Transformation (genetics) → Genetic transformation – Natural disambiguation is preferred over parenthetical disambiguation (see WP:NATDIS and WP:NCDAB). The form "genetic transformation" is used in the titles of six of this article's references, so it seems to be common enough to be considered natural. Of the possible natural titles, "genetic transformation" fits the article's current scope better than alternatives such as "bacterial transformation" or "natural transformation". Jruderman (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support. Straight forward improvement to the title, this is perfectly natural. &#8213; Synpath 18:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:NATURAL. Steel1943  (talk) 18:32, 1 June 2024 (UTC)