Talk:Sulfatide

A Note from the Authors
The original sulfatide page had little information on the topic as a whole. As a result, our goal was to do a complete expansion of the article. Upon researching sulfatide, there was a moderate amount of secondary literature. This allowed us to cover the topic broadly focusing on every relevant aspect, while also allowing us to covers certain aspects with a bit more depth. Accordingly, you will notice that certain sections start with a general category, such as biological function of sulfatide or role in pathological cells and tissue, but are broken down so that all relevant aspects are covered, ultimately, giving the broad sections more focus and depth. In addition to these major sections, additional relevant information was given with respect to history, synthesis, and clinical significance in order to provide a more complete article. So with the moderate amount of secondary research we found, we intended to cover all relevant aspects, while giving increased depth to topics that had more secondary literature.7753spoom (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Primary Reviewer #1
Well written- This article was very well written. It goes into a lot of depth regarding sulfatide and covers a broad range of topics related to it. It is dense with scientific terminology but that is to be expected to a point. I would suggest maybe explaining the more complex concepts. I really enjoyed reading about all of the diseases sulfatide is involved with. Overall, I found this article to be very interesting and extremely informative.

Verifiable- I did not find any original research in the sources used. All sources used appear to be secondary reviews.

Broad in coverage- As previously stated, this article covers a wide range of areas associated with sulfatide. It is dense with information and appears to cover all areas. While at times it is hard to keep up reading the article with all the science terms and concepts, as it is a scientific article, I think the general public could get a good sense of what is going on, but would probably need some additional background knowledge to completely understand what is going on, and as I previously stated, you may want to address this issue. The only thing I would add is more information in the history section if more information can be found.

Neutral- The article is clearly neutral. The facts are stated as is with no opinions or swaying of the article.

Illustrated- While there is one image of sulfatide included, with such a long article I think another image or two could have been included in a variety of sections (kidney, cancer, diabetes, hemostatsis, or viral infection).

Review of source- Reference #12 (Regulation of sulfotransferase activity by vitamin K in mouse brain) was well cited in this article. Although there was not much to reference from it in relation to sulfatide, the information that was relevant was well cited and included in the article correctly. The authors clearly stated that warfarin caused a reduction in sulfatide that was corrected with vitamin K treatment. Everything relevant to this article was included. I did notice that for reference #11 (Vitamin K-dependent Proteins in the Developing and Aging Nervous System) there is no link to it. Overall, great job on this article! Impressive work! Vickimu2015 (talk) 18:24, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Response from the Authors
Dear Vickimu2015,

Thank you for your great feedback. We expanded the history section per your request with information regarding the discovery and controversy over the chemical structure of sulfatide, however the history of sulfatide is limited. We also added pictures to the sulfatide synthesis and degradation, nervous system, immune system, metachromatic leukodystrophy, cancer and tumor, HIV-1, and role in Alzheimer disease sections. We hope that this makes the reading less dry and the information more understandable for the visual based learner. Also, in your request to explain more complex subjects, we expanded upon and provided explanation of terms including the upregulation of sulfatide, the definition of a sulfoglycolipid, the role of a negative regulator, the cause of plaque formation and the definition of a plaque, the definition of microdomain, the definition of a chemokine, and the cause and definition of an audiogenic seizure as well as other terms and topics. Explanation of these terms is intended to provide greater clarity in the section to which they are a part of, so hopefully, this makes these concepts and the concepts they are associated with easier to understand. Unfortunately this page is not meant to redefine and explain every complex concept, which is why a multitude of wiki-links are provided and have been added since the review in every section of the page. This will provide the reader with information on terms they do not understand, without having to add explanation for every term within one article. This should also help to clarify complex terms and concepts. Otherwise, some of the complexity comes from wordy protein and chemical names that cannot be altered, but we did try to provide full names rather than acronyms where necessary to avoid confusion specifically in section such as the synthesis and degradation of sulfatide, or in the diabetes mellitus sections, which includes terms such interleukin-1 beta (lL-1β), interferon beta 1b (lFN-1β), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). The full term and acronym are provided to help foster understanding and reduce confusion. We also made sure that if an acronym was used that it was defined previously in the same section so readers do not need to go to another section to find the full word. This will also contribute to reduced confusion and unnecessary searching of the document.

Lastly, thank you for noticing that reference 11 did not have a PMID or Doi. We were able to correct that issue and the PMID and Doi are now present for source 11 and all other sources have a PMID, Doi or both.

We hope our changes meet your expectations and help to improve the article. Maddyshea3 (talk) 21:04, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Primary Reviewer #2
This article is generally very good! It is overall well-written and the content is very good; it covers a broad range of topics regarding sulfatide and utilizes a good number of secondary sources in doing so. In terms of writing style, there are a few minor spelling/grammar errors that should be fixed, but nothing that would interfere much with the reading of the article. Still, some parts of the article are a little repetitive (particularly with regard to myelination - this is mentioned several times in similar ways throughout the article) and would benefit from cutting/rewording. One thing I would change is the intro sentence - it seems a bit clunky for the first sentence of the article and is loaded with heavy terminology that could be confusing. I also think that some of what's in the intro sentence may delve a little too deeply into the material, and it would be best if you could simplify it a bit until a little further into the article. Some of the other terminology used throughout the article is also pretty heavy, but I think this is mostly appropriate based on the scope of the article. Under the Bacterial Infection section, the first bullet point needs to be differentiated somehow from the rest - it looks like a part of the list when I don't think it's supposed to be. One last thing is that there are a few more places that wiki links could have been utilized, such as the use of the word "heterologous" in the last sentence of the first section.

I checked source #6, Mini Review: Immune Response to Myelin-Derived Sulfatide and CNS-Demyelination. It meets the criteria for a good source and is clearly and accurately cited in the article. Although there there is a fairly small section of the article devoted to this source, I think it is used appropriately as the source itself is pretty specific and doesn't much apply to other sections of the article. Good work with this article! You guys were able to cover a lot of ground and present it well. Yayneuro (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Response from the Authors
Dear Yayneuro,

First of all we want to thank you for a very detailed and thorough review of our article! As a group we went through the article in its entirety and hopefully were able to eradicate any spelling and grammatical errors that you encountered. However, because you did not provide any specific examples we can only hope we caught everything that you did!

We also took into consideration the repetitiveness of the subject of myelination in the article, and we did eliminate a portion from the Metachromatic leukodystrophy section. We felt that other mentions of myelination were necessary for proper understanding of the information and removal of the information would cause confusion to the reader. Additionally, in order to make the first sentence less "clunky", we split the one heavy sentence into two, which hopefully makes the reading easier. The terminology however, cannot be changed because what you are talking about is the name and basics of this molecule. We cannot change the full name or class of this molecule in order to make it easier to read. Unfortunately, many of the protein and chemical names are complicated but cannot be changed or altered. We provided as many wiki-links as possible and images to give the reader a sense of what these molecules, proteins, etc. are. This will hopefully help eliminate confusion and foster even greater learning and understanding. As said to reviewer 1, we also expanded upon and provided explanation of terms including the upregulation of sulfatide, the role of a negative regulator, the cause of plaque formation and the definition of a plaque, the definition of microdomain, and the cause and definition of an audiogenic seizure as well as other topics. Explanation of these terms is intended to provide greater clarity in the section to which they are a part of and help reduce complication and confusion. Lastly, we did not alter our lead section other than to add links and break up the first sentence. We felt the lead section did not delve too deeply into the subject. It essentially explains the name, class, a brief overview of location and synthesis, and then a brief overview of its many biological roles and pathological roles. Compared to the breadth of the article, this is a very general lead needed to summarize all the included information below it. Accordingly, we felt it was a good overview of the subject that did not delve too deep but we appreciate your suggestion and we did consider it carefully.

Also, thank you for catching the bullet point error under the Bacteria Infection section; that mistake has been fixed by eliminating the bullet point and leaving that first point as an introduction to the list. Again, we also took your advice and added more links to each section throughout the whole article in order to allow the reader to understand terms he/she may not understand.

Thank you again for your review. We hope we were able to further improve our article with your suggestions. Maddyshea3 (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Primary Reviewer #3
Well written- I think this article did a great job explaining Sulfatide and the major topics that correlate with it it. The detail that this article goes into is very nicely written, however at times it is a bit hard to unwrap. Maybe utilizing simpler terms to explain certain concepts could improve portions of the article. Verifiable-All sources that were used were secondary reviews. Broad in coverage- Overall the authors of this article did an amazing job going into detail about this topic. There was a lot of good information tied in from different portions of the topic. Sometimes, however, it was a little too detailed that certain concepts were a bit difficult to understand. Neutral- It is written very objectively. Illustrated- If there were more illustrations added to explain some of the concepts maybe some of the details would be better explained visually.

Review of source- Reference #7 (The role of sulfatide in thrombogenesis and haemostasis) this article was properly cited within the text. This article was very well written! I love how this topic was very detailed. Pitap (talk) 04:47, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Response from the Authors
Dear Pitap,

We appreciate the time you took in reviewing our article and hope you feel our changes have made it even better! We do understand that the detail is “hard to unwrap” and since your review, we have added even more explanations and wiki-links to the densely scientific areas that will hopefully make the detail easier to unwrap and to understand. As stated to the second primary reviewer, we expanded upon and provided explanation of terms including the upregulation of sulfatide, the role of a negative regulator, the cause of plaque formation and the definition of a plaque, the definition of microdomain, and the cause and definition of an audiogenic seizure as well as other topics. Explanation of these terms is intended to provide greater clarity in the section to which they are a part of, so hopefully, this makes these concepts and the concepts they are associated with easier to understand and unwrap. We also added seven more pictures and illustrations to our article as you can see in sulfatide synthesis and degradation, nervous system, immune system, metachromatic leukodystrophy, cancer and tumor, HIV-1, and role in Alzheimer disease section. We did this to illustrate the article but to also explain concepts in a different way and to provide illustrations of some of the proteins and structures we mention throughout the article! This will hopefully give a visual representation of what is being read. One that may be particularly helpful is the visual representation of the chemical synthesis. This may help readers understand the chemical terms and the reaction even better than simply reading them.

We also made sure to use full terms were necessary rather than strictly using acronyms throughout the whole article. In fact, the full term is always given the first time it is used at the start of each section rather than the same acronyms throughout the whole article that the reader may forget. This way, each section can be read on its own without searching for the meaning of an acronym. It also gives readers a better idea of what the term is rather than unfamiliar letters thrown together. So hopefully this also helps to clarify some confusion and complexity. Otherwise, as stated to reviewer two, some of the complexity comes from wordy protein and chemical names that cannot be altered. It is unfortunately just a component of this topic. We did try to add wikilinks and images of some of these proteins and structures so that the reader can visualize what they are reading or seek additional information on the term itself. Nonetheless, we hope the additional explanation, wiki-links and images help to add greater clarity and reduce complexity.

Thank you again for all your wonderful suggestions. We hope we were able to improve the article and raise it to a higher level with the help of your suggestions. Maddyshea3 (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Response to Secondary Reviewers
We want to thank all of the secondary reviewers for helping us improve our page! This will serve as a comprehensive response to all of the contributors. In response to your concerns, we went through and clarified and defined as many acronyms as possible. Additionally, we made sure to define an acronym the first time it is used in every section. This will limit confusion and searching throughout the article to find the definition of an acronym. We also hope this helps with any confusion and makes the article easier to follow.

We also understand that this is a very technical and scientifically dense article, because this is a very scientifically dense and specific subject. However, much of this complexity comes from complicated protein and chemical names, and simplifying it would exclude the necessary details regarding sulfatide. Additionally, the normal lay person would probably not be super interested in sulfatide, or more likely would only be interested in the clinical aspects, which are more easily digested in this article with little scientific knowledge. The appeal of this article is more for someone looking for a deeper understanding of what a sulfatide is as a start to their research perhaps, rather than a simple, few sentence, definition, which can be attained in the lead if desired. We also did provide some additional explanation of terms including the upregulation of sulfatide, the role of a negative regulator, the cause of plaque formation and the definition of a plaque, the definition of microdomain, and the cause and definition of an audiogenic seizure as well as other topics. Explanation or definition of these terms is intended to provide greater clarity in the section to which they are a part of, so hopefully, this makes these concepts and the concepts they are associated with easier to understand. We also added a lot more pictures to the sulfatide synthesis and degradation, nervous system, immune system, metachromatic leukodystrophy, cancer and tumor, HIV-1, and role in Alzheimer disease sections in order to spice things up and hopefully make things easier to understand and visualize. Numerous wiki links were also added in order to give readers more resources for information. We expanded the history section to include more information per multiple requests as well.

In regards to the lack of references in the intro section, wikipedia standards suggest using references in the body sections rather than the introduction; realistically, all of the information in the introduction is cited in the body of the article. However, per your request we added limited amounts of references into the introductory paragraph. The following link brings you to the detailed explanation by wikipedia regarding references in the introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_create_and_manage_a_good_lead_section View the “References in the lead?” section. 7753spoom (talk) 01:24, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all for your suggestions and comments. They have been very helpful, and we hope we improved our article and meet your expectations

Secondary reviewer # 1
the article was very detailed and expanded very well. sections concerning connections to disease and viruses was very interesting. however some of the terms were a little hard to follow and some of the acronyms. Also the depth of the article is good but may be a little too good; a person with limited to no science backround would be hard press to keep up, I even found myself looking up word meanings. but overall great expansion from all angles.Yobandaik 02:27, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Secondary Review # 2
This is a very interesting topic that clearly contains a lot of background information. Overall, the article is pretty well written. I think it would benefit from having more pictures to help give a visual aid for some of the more difficult terms. Also, wiki links or further explanation of some terms would help a less informed individual to read through the article smoother. The section that connects your topic to diseases is very good. It is beneficial in helping relate your above descriptions to the application of the diseases. 6487heffroa (talk) 22:24, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Secondary Review #3
This was very well written and very in-depth. Your understanding of this material is excellent although this is conveyed very specifically and scientifically almost to the point where it may be over the heads of people without a scientific background. The only section that could use some work is the History section which is obviously a fraction of the size of some of your larger sections with a wealth of information. Is there anything else to say about the history like research done on this or any kinds of general advancements that can set up the rest of the article and give a frame of reference? Overall great article.Theactualdonald (talk) 02:31, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Secondary Review #4
Very well written and nice depth to the article. My only suggestion is that you may want to ease up on the highly scientific jargon as it may go way over peoples heads who are not specialists in this area, but other than that very well done!AAPhysiology (talk)

Secondary Review #5
If this truly had little on the page before then this expansion of the article is brilliant. I thought the layout of your article was spectacular and was also well written. The material within the article looks to be of the higher level but you were able to tackle it quite well. I think the objective of this whole project was to make sure somebody of a lower level could read the article and understand. This may have not been accomplished due to the organic chemistry lingo straight from the beginning of the article. Although, on integrity of a wikipedia page explaining a chemical compound I believe it was the right thing to do.

I did not notice many references in the introduction. This is troubling.

I am glad sulfatide was able to be discussed about with accordance to diseases. These sections are always of high interest to the savvy. This section was nicely constructed. Brolenchek (talk) 23:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)brolenchek

Secondary Review #6
Overall, I thought you guys did a really good job on this article. It was well written, showed a good understanding of the topic, and covered a lot of material about sulfatides. In particular, I really liked how the beginning of article went into depth about sulfatide synthesis and its biological functions and then ended with an interesting discussion about the role of sulfatide in diseases. This made the whole article more interesting by allowing the reader to make connections between the specific biological functions and "real-world" examples. It looks like it plays a really important role! I also took particular interest in the metachromatic leukodustrophy section - my group chose "leukodystrophy" as an article topic, and during my research I found a lot of information about the role of sulfatides. This being said, I do have a couple suggestions for your group; I think that the article is very long and in-depth and almost too complex for someone who's coming to wikipedia for a first look at the topic. To help with this, I'd suggest adding a few more wiki links in places or explaining the more scientific points a little bit more, as well as adding some informative pictures. I think these two things could really help take your guys' page to the next level. Besides that, I really learned a lot, good job! KateSage (talk) 18:29, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Secondary Review #7
In general, this article was very informative. The only suggestion I can make would be to edit the very first sentence. It was somewhat lengthy, and the words were very technical. As a reader, I would have liked to see the first sentence of the second paragraph in the lead section be the starting sentence. It is more concise and allows you to start broad and then narrow in on the subject while introducing it. Other than that, great article!Nqualls (talk) 04:57, 14 April 2015 (UTC)