User:Eleoni2002/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Saccharomyces boulardii

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am working on these evaluations for MIBO 3500, which is an introductory microbiology course. Saccharomyces boulardii is a microbe closely related to S. cerevisiae, one of the most important model organisms of all time. This article matters because it is important medically as a probiotic. It is important to the research and genetics of S. cerevisiae as well. My first impression of the article was that the introduction and "Biology" sections were good and detailed. After this, many of the sections are very short with not enough information entered. One section, "Veterinary use," does not have anything under it. It is not filled out enough, as many of the sections besides the first two. These sections need more information included in them.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of the article does a good job of describing background information, considering where S. boulardii was first isolated from and how it is related to S. cerevisiae. The section describes where the yeast strain grows, how it was named, and how CRISPR-Cas9 can alter the yeast genome. This lead section does a good job of introducing the microbe, but it does not describe or introduce the other sections that will follow on the Wikipedia page. The section is concise, but it would be better if more biology, metabolism, and cell structure was included. It is also repetitive in mentioning Henri Boulard twice in the article's introduction.

The content of the article is relevant to the strain of yeast, S. boulardii. Unfortunately, most of the article's content focuses on the medical uses, industrial uses, and pathogen-fighting characteristics. The article does not include lots of information on the biology and metabolism of the organism. The content is up to date, with a few peer-reviewed articles being out of the date range. Besides 3 articles, all of the data is from relatively recent which keeps the article up to date. As mentioned previously, there are some content gaps in the biology, metabolism, and symbiotics. The article does not deal with Wikipedia's equity gaps.

The article has a very balanced tone, including both sides of the argument to it being a beneficial and harmful microbe. The article addresses both sides of this argument, but mainly focuses on the medical uses of the microbe. I think the article does a good job of not leaning to one opinion on this microbe. The article addresses both the harmful and beneficial aspects of the microbe. Though it has a relatively balanced tone, the article includes a lot of medical perspectives on S. boulardii as a probiotic. Less of these opinions could be included.

All of the sources come from peer-reviewed journals, something that helps the credibility of the article a lot. There are only 3 articles from before 2000, so the sources are relatively recent. This continues to make the article seem credible with more current research and all coming from peer-reviewed literature. The links work for the sources used. There are 31 sources used for the microbe, so this is a good number of sources for an article, especially because the article is not very long. There is a wide range of authors, and it reflects a lot of the research in this area at the time. Overall, the article has a good use of peer-reviewed articles and sources.

The article is well written, with no obvious grammatical errors throughout the paper. It is easy to read and broken down into clear sections that do a good job of explaining the yeast strain. Some of the sections are short and need more information though. This would help the article to include more information under each section.

The article only includes one small video, and it does not do an ample job of showing the organism in its host environment. The one image is well-captioned, adheres to copyright regulations, but it does not do a good job of showing the organism. There are not enough images, and the one included image is not clear and obvious enough on the organism of interest. Because of this, there should be more pictures added that are clearer. This would make the article a lot more visually appealing.

Many discussions are going on on the talk page, including a discussion on if the S. boulardii strain is even independent from the S. cerevisiae strain. There are discussions on additional sources that could be included and the availability of this yeast strain as a probiotic in different countries. There are also discussions concerning the efficiency, dosage, and brands of S. boulardii. It is a part of four Wikiprojects, including Microbiology, Pharmacology, Medicine, and Fungi. The rating for the article is Start-class, mid-importance, or C-class for the different Wikiprojects. This article focuses on the probiotic uses instead of the biology like we would focus on in class.

Overall, the article is well-written, it just needs more information. The probiotic uses and medical uses are overstated in the article, so including more biology and metabolism content would be very beneficial. The biology and lead sections are well-done, but the other sections are underwritten in the paper. This could use some improvement. I would say the article is a bit underdeveloped as a whole.