Talk:PC12 cell line

This topic is being edited as an assignment in an undergraduate neurobiology course. The course is participating in the Wikipedia Education Program. The revised article will be posted by March 24, 2014.

This article's text is copyright by the Center for Cancer Education. See: http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?pc12+cells


 * Then at least it should have been credited in the page itself. I just put it there, although I'll probably erase it and start fresh soon anyway. EPiet (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

=Changes= Regarding the changes I have done.

There were a lot of small changes done to my article with a few other changes to regarding information that was lacking from my topic. I am trying my best and since I have not been working on this for as long as I would have liked it is hard to add everything out there on PC12. I want to make sure that I am using secondary sources, which is most important to wikipedia since they are a tertiary source. I want to go to the library this week to touch on the history of PC12 and hopefully find a book or something on it. If not there is not an extensive background on this cell line but there is a lot of experimentation out there using it. I touched upon the ones that needed the least technical discussion in order to understand and I hope that is adequate for everyone. I really appreciate everyone's input and I will try my best to fix everything.

As far as the one broken link I am not sure what to do, I could change it to one of the other sources since it is talked about in other articles. But! At the top of this discussion page there is "This article's text is copyright by the Center for Cancer Education. See: http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?pc12+cells" and I don't know what to make of it and don't want to be infringing on the rights of anyone. I want to maintain that there was initial work done on this article by the Center for Cancer Education and since I am having trouble formatting as it is I want to make sure I am including them in the topic. Jammin1993 (talk) 03:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Regards to Reviewers= Hey guys, totally sorry I forgot to mention a few things about my reviews. This article has been worked on only by me and the amount of information that one person can put into this article is limited since this topic is quite vast. I wanted to touch on what was most important in that what the cells are, do, drug effects, and research use. I do plan on doing some organizational things and I really appreciate all the input so far! Thanks!

=Secondary Review= I think you did a good job with this topic. It looked like it might have been difficult to cover early on in the article because of the amount of jargon necessary, but you guys did a good job of linking to the appropriate Wikipedia articles for further explanations. The article starts strong with the introduction and you have a good picture. Some ways to improve might be to add more subsections. You talk about it in the intro, but you could also have a section dedicated to the origin and background of the PC12 cell line as your first subsection, potentially. Another way to improve might be to focus more on examples/research that is done using the PC12 cell line. It seems like a pretty broad topic, but providing examples can make it easier to understand why it's relevant and put everything in context. So it could also be a good idea to expand the "Disease Research" section with more details, if possible. But I could see that those types of things could be difficult to do if there isn't a whole lot of information available. Good job overall! --18:14, 30 March 2014 (UTC)D23sunn (talk)

Response
Thank you for the input on my article! It has been quite the project to put together by myself this whole time so I really appreciate the input you had on it. I plan on adding at least a small amount more to the research subtopic on PC12 but this is time limiting in that I only have the rest of the week to finish it up. There was a lot of information out there and with some restructuring I am hoping that a few things you pointed out become more informative. Thanks again!Jammin1993 (talk) 01:48, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Primary Review= The article is good, however there are a few things that could be improved. The first link to the cell line doesn't come up with one specific example of a cell line, I don't know if that's what you intended or if you knew, but that's what happens. The article seems more like a research paper than a wikipedia article as it contains a lot of scientific jargon. Might want to add more explanations so that a person who has probably only taken high school biology could read it. For example you talk about it causing amperometric spikes with patch clamp recording, but don't define what those are. A quick explanation should be good or even just seeing if there's something you could link to that. There's a link to patch clamp recording methods but none to amerometric spikes. Speaking of links, I liked the see also section of the article, that was really good! on another note, there were some other wordings of sentences that might need to be played with so they sound better. For example, in the last sentence of the introduction, it says "used to understand the job of synaptogtagmin" which is awkward wording, might want to change job to role. There are other examples of sentences that could be tweaked throughout; a quick read through will fix it I'm sure. The introduction would also be a good place to go into more detail on what a cell line actually is, since it is not completely clear from the article. As for the length, since it is short, you might want to add in a section on the discovery, like the fact that it was obtained by the tumors of rats in the 1970s research article that is your first source. Looking through your sources, they all seem to bee valid, except for the link to the center for cancer education is inactive. I didn't look through the last reference because there wasn't a link. But there was a lot of good information in the first 2 I looked at and there was one reference that seemed to not have a ton of information, but good overall for the others. So, to sum up, expand the article a little more, fix links, and play with your wording to make it less awkward and more accessible to the average reader. Good luck! Awesomepossum12 (talk) 23:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Response
I know that these seems like a research paper but I tried to link as much of the scientific jargon so the readers could go to pages in order to quickly look up what some of the specifics were. I wanted to maintain the integrity of the information. I'll give it a good read through and see what I can change to simpler terms without losing the value of the information. The amperometric spikes I read from the page on Amperometry was the change in current so I changed the article to say spikes from the change in current instead of amperometric spikes. The inactive link I was unsure about what to do since the talk page had some information on it at first and it said that it should at least be credited to the Cancer Center. So I am going to ask Mynleiff what to do about that one. I'll double check all my links before the end of the week. --Jammin1993 (talk) 02:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Secondary Review 2= The other two reviews covered most of what I have to say. But again the technical jargon is a bit hard to understand sometimes, and more links to big words would be nice. I would like a clear definition of what a cell line is since the link does not take you to a specific page about what a cell line is (a set group of eternally, identical producing cancer cells used for study if I understand correctly). I would also like a link or a scientific notation for zeptomoles because I actually forgot what order that was. You seem to have gathered more info than a straight google search would do so great job on finding what you could. The article was very concise and presented the information in a logical way with a nice picture to boot.SCarolina55 (talk) 05:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC

Response
Yeah I will try to either link or use new words for some of the technical words. The link to cell line actually does bring you to the cell line page just to the bottom of the page at specific cell lines. It is interesting and I would be willing to change it if it was more convenient to the reader. I changed zeptomoles to its scientific notation of 1.9x10-19 now so it should be a lot easier to understand. Thanks for your input! --Jammin1993 (talk) 02:46, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Primary Review Number 2=

At first glance the article appears to be scientific and factual. Both of which are very important criteria for an article such as this. It seems that the author is heavily interested in the topic, but this may show a particular bias for the cell line. This slight bias can be counteracted with a subsection detailing the disadvantages of this particular cell line. Also, a history of how these cells came to exist would be nice. The article is well-written especially the introduction even though the article as a whole is a bit short. The one weirdly worded sentence I saw was the first one of the last paragraph. The vesicles of PC12 are broadly covered but the PC12 lineage itself is not covered as much. Is it possible that other areas of study of the PC12 line other than the vesicles could be included? Or is this the only major reason these cells are studied? All of the information seems to be verifiable by secondary sources, but the references section could use formatting work. For an article this size, the single illustration is appropriate. I like the See Also section, and think that was a good way of connecting other topics. The links are numerous and effective. However, for some of the more non-household words, I would add explanations for these words (such as amperometry). After reading the last source. I feel that the information cited corresponds accurately. This is a good article for information on the cell line's advantages and instead of putting that in the title, you could make a pros and cons section of the cell line, which would add length. It also seems that after reading the article you used it very heavily to write your later sections. It would be better if you could include two sources of information for these sections instead of relying solely on this article by Westerink and Ewing. I think the article is good over all but with a few tweaks it could be made a much more informative and functional article.Stockton Whitfield (talk) 04:20, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Response
Thanks for the detailed response on my article. I will consider looking into the cons of the use of PC12 as a cell line. There must be some sort of problem with them as they are not as commonly used as they used to be and thus pushed out of the scientific community as a common cell line to use in experimentation. I am looking into fixing some of the language into more understandable content. The article that I used heavily was due to the 4 pages of references that was used on it, thus making it an incredible resource filled with plenty of citations to other articles making it exceptionally great for the article. There is so much information out there and the entire page was only completed by me. I plan on fixing some of the sources before the end of the week. I appreciate the input on my article and am going to take everything you say into consideration. --Jammin1993 (talk) 03:12, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Secondary Review #3= You guys did a good job taking what is obviously a very technical subject and bringing it down to a level more understandable to a layman. I think the use of links to other Wikipedia article really helps to explain a lot of the jargon used in the article and helps to make it easier to read. However, I noticed some grammatical and style errors. “Used to understand the job of synaptotagmin in vesicle fusion, in which increase in calcium concentration displaces synaptotagmin and catalyzes membrane fusion,” is a sentence fragment and I think it should read “It is used to…” I also think the second section should just read “Effects of Drugs.” Lastly, the External Links section is not in Wikipedia format, which uses hyperlinks instead of numbered links.

While what you have is good so far, I really think there is a lot more that can be added. Maybe a history section on how this specific cell line was derived? You also say that they differentiate into neuron-like cells that are not technically neurons. What do they differentiate into then? What are the role of these cells in the adult mouse? Lastly, you touch on their usefulness during experimentation. What types of experiments have been performed using them? I think these are all questions that warrant some explanation in your article.Marq808 (talk) 08:01, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Response
Sorry I forgot to tell everyone that this article was completed by only one student and thus this one is a bit shorter than the rest but everyone seems to want some history on the subject. There is plenty more that can be added but I wanted to make sure I touched on more important and relevant information that one person could cover on the page while meeting the wikipedia criteria. I know I have some formatting problems still and have to work on making a link for few of my citations. I will address what types of experiments were done if possible. But they seem more specific than the information that was gained through experimentation with them which is what I touched on. Thanks for your input! --Jammin1993 (talk) 03:25, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

=Secondary Review #4= You did a good job I think. It seems like it was a difficult topic to write about and you did it all by yourself so good work. Couple of things that I noticed were that you have lots of links, especially in the beginning. It is a little distracting because if someone who does not know anything about biology looks this up, they would have to click on every link. Maybe you could try explaining some of the words instead of providing links. It is a very short article however, I believe you could have added more information but I know you did say it was difficult to find information for it. Maybe you could provide a little background information about it, like its history and when it was founded and by who if that information is available or talk about experiments as well. There was a missed period in the drugs section. I did like the disease research section but again maybe you could provide more information and talk more about the results that were obtained. How was the experiment conducted perhaps. Going back to the links, I did like them but again, maybe limit them. I also liked reading the section about the drugs. You definitely have a good start but if you can find out more information, I would absolutely recommend adding more to this topic. Keep up the good work. Muhippolover (talk) 01:12, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Response
I did a lot of links to maintain the integrity of the topic. I know it is difficult for non-science people to understand but that is expected in certain topics, at least I would believe that. I believe at some level it is important for those who are looking for this topic or actively search it are able to understand the technical jargon that is used and if they are not completely sure about what it is are able to reach other wikipedia pages in order to fully evaluate my topic. Now I know that there are some other errors or technical terms with no explanation but I do not believe the ones with links are intruding on the research of someone who is in a high-school biology course. The more links the better, at least I would not want to have to find it on my own if I didn't know what it meant. There is more information out there but it is hard to narrow down the most important information or adding only experimental information that needed small amounts of explanation. There is some information on Alzheimer's but it comes with a lot lot lot more technical jargon than the other ones that were talked about. As far as I understand there is a high demand for more history on the topic so I decided to rename a subtopic to Background and transform the information that was there into the a more understandable background information on it. I hope that helps! Also thanks for the input, I really appreciate it. --Jammin1993 (talk) 03:33, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

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