User:AshlyLily/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Beta-lactam antibiotics

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The beta-lactam ring (or square) with the NItrogen and the double-bonded Oxygen is easily recognizable from the many biochemicals I have learned about in biochemistry and its applications in microbiology. I can instantly recogonize it and tell you what that molecule is just by seeing the structure. However, I don't recall much about its mechanism towards killing bacteria so I figured it would be great to learn more about it while evaluating this article.

Evaluate the article
Intro

The first sentence consicely explains what makes something a beta-lactam antibiotic by pointing out that it contains the beta-lactam ring in its chemical structure. However, if I were new to the subject, without the use of the graphic outlining what the ring is, I would clueless be as to what this means. What functional group is present in the ring? How many carbons is the ring made up of? The mechanism of how it attacks the bacterial cell wall is presented briefly as well as its significance in medicine. The conclusion to the introduction describes the bacterial defense against beta-lactam. All of these topics are the bare points that I would like to know, if I were doing research on beta-lactam antibiotics, however some topics in the body aren't covered in the introduction. I will excuse this as there is a lot to cover about its uses. Too much to be included in a brief introduction.

Content

-With a cursory glance, it seems like the majority of the content of this article is relevant to the topic and the information provided concerning the mechanisms and biochemistry of the beta-lactam ring in the molecule seems current and satisfactory if I were to want to look further into the mechanisms behind beta-lactum drugs. However, this information comes after some brief, yet, extraneous information on the beta-lactam penetration of uninflamed brain meninges. This seems to have come out of nowhere in the medical use portion of this article and with little context as to why this has even been brought up. I understand wanting to know about adverse allergic reactions as well, but without even touching on the mechanisms and with such little information on its medical uses, how can I begin to interpret this information?

Tone and Balance

-It is a relief to say, that as with all reputable scientific articles that simply try to explain a topic, there is no bias that I can detect. No claims have been made outside of what is currently understood about the mechanisms of beta-lactam rings and there has been no push towards specific products or viewpoints.

Sources and References

-There are 27 different sources varying from articles in journals on chemical research, therapeutics, microbiology, and biochemistry. However, the majority of these sources have been published in the late 1980’s with the most recent paper having been published in 2017. I wonder if this article could benefit from new breakthroughs, if any, in the study of the beta-lactam class of antibiotics and the growing resistance to it microbes are developing. The links to these peer-reviewed articles do work however when I do my own looking up of peer-reviewed research articles on the topic, I can find many that could have added much more relevant information to the content.

Organization and Writing Quality

-While the writing quality is good for a scientific article, the organization is unsatisfactory. I am not given a wide-view as to what the topic is and then having the basics laid out in front of me in an order that makes sense. I’m already seeing problems in the Medical Use portion of this article in that it explains how, initially, beta-lactam antibiotics targeted gram-positive bacteria exclusively until a broad spectrum began targeting gram-negative bacteria as well but it doesn’t provide a description as to why this is. If I had not known the differences between a gram-negative and gram-positive cell wall, I would be wondering why gram-positives were the initial target and how the drug has been changed to now target gram-negatives. Rather than evaluate on this or the other various usages of beta-lactum drugs, there is a jump to the low penetration of the drug in uninflamed brain meninges which then doesn’t really lead to a conclusion or to its relevance on the topic. Another mistake made was in not including the discovery of beta-lactam antibiotics in this article and its historical significance which would then have to be found using other sources. Adverse allergic reactions are then addressed, which is a useful and interesting bit of information on the topic, yet it seems a little out of place. Certainly the mechanism should be explained first before going on side-topics such as its incompatibility with a small portion of patients. Finally, the mechanism is described in the third portion of this article which addresses some of the questions I might have had about beta-lactams upon beginning to read this article. It is unusual how this, the most important information about beta-lactam antibiotics, has been pushed to the near end of this article. If I were to structure this article, I would include an introduction, then the history of this drug and its relevance in medicine and then its mechanism before even touching on allergic reactions to it. This content is not structured well.

Images and Media

-Images seem to be the best thing this article has going for them. The highlighting of the beta-lactam ring in the chemical structure make up for the introduction’s lack of explanation as to what it is composed of. However, the layout of these images could be cleaned up. When illustrating the mechanism of beta-lactam inhibition of proteins binding in the cell wall, there could have been more visually appealing diagrams that are easier to follow that could have been used. The images are very well-captioned, and often provide a better understanding of the topic than the images itself do.

Talk Page Discussion

-Surprisingly, not a lot of discussion on this article in the talk page. There were some helpful advice on improving the layout, but not much on the content itself. At least not to the degree that I have been criticizing it. It is rated as a C in Pharmacology, Medicine, and Microbiology.

Overall Impressions

-Aside from the explanation of the mechanisms and biochemistry of the compound, I am not terribly impressed with this article. For something this exciting, much more could have been added and done with it without overloading on too much information. It is written well and, when called for, can be quite descriptive to a satisfactory degree. Some improvements would include more background on the history and medical significance of beta-lactam antibiotics. If only to give the coming sections of this article a boost. Definitely an underdeveloped article that must go through many revisions but overall, not a terrible one.