User:Jfriend2/Bio460Sandbox

Julie and Eddie's Bio 460 Project

=Assignment 6=
 * I think we can generally just add more content to the sections we just established.
 * Some content was added, 5 pictures have been added to benefit the article. Much of our content has remained, but been revised by our dear friend jytdog.
 * answer to the comments posted on our talk page
 * all comments have been address
 * I'm not sure if we will have enough content, so I was thinking we could completely edit the "Human Cloning" section in the Cloning article since it's outdated
 * Estephe9 did the majority of the edit on the Cloning page in the Human Cloning section, Jfriend2 notified on the talk page of this article that changes were being made to this section

=Assignment 4=

Lead Edit
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning, which is the reproduction of human cells and tissue. It does not refer to identical twins, which is a commonplace way of producing human clones. The ethics of cloning is a controversial issue.

There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine and transplants, and is an active area of research. Two common methods of therapeutic cloning are: Somatic-cell nuclear transfer and, more recently, pluripotent stem cell induction. Reproductive cloning involves making an entire cloned human, instead of just specific cells or tissues.

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT)
In SCNT, the nucleus of a somatic cell is taken from a donor and transplanted into a host egg cell, which had its own genetic material removed previously, making it an enucleated egg. After the donor somatic cell genetic material is transferred into the host oocyte with a micropipette, the somatic cell genetic material is fused with the egg using an electric current. Once the two cells have fused, the new cell can be permitted to grow in a surrogate or artificially.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs)
Creating iPSCs is a long and inefficient process. A specific set of genes, often called "reprogramming factors", are introduced into a specific adult cell type. These factors send signals in the mature cell that cause the cell to become a pluripotent stem cell. This process is highly studied and new techniques are being discovered frequently on how to better this induction process.

This technique does not involve an egg cell or the formation of an embryo and is seen as less controversial because of this.

Future Medicinal Uses of Human Cloning
See also: Personalized medicine

With the available and developing technologies of iPSCs, as well as the progress in the Human Genome Project, hopes for more effective cures to disease are within reach. The traditional SCNT method of cloning cells has proven ineffective in humans. Therefore, researchers are shifting their focus toward developing iPSCs. Studies have shown that iPSCs could potentially be used to treat diseases such as Parkinson's disease and diabetes as well as damage to the body such as spinal chord injury. Scientists are also hopeful that the Human Genome Project could help develop personalized drugs for conditions such as cancer and psychological disorders.

Pop Culture Add-on
Human cloning gained so much popularity in the early 2000's that Time Magazine published a cover story on the topic.

History Addition
Put in this paragraph before the one that starts, "In January 200-"

In 2004 and 2005, Hwang Woo-suk, a professor at Seoul National University published two separate articles in the journal Science claiming to have successfully harvested pluripotent, embryonic stem-cells from a cloned human blastocyst using somatic-cell nuclear transfer techniques. Hwang claimed to have created 11 different patent-specific stem cell lines. This would have been the first major break through for success in human cloning. However, in 2006 Science retracted both of his articles on clear evidence that much of his data from the experiments was fabricated.

Opening paragraphs
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. It does not refer to monozygotic multiple births or the reproduction of humans/animals cells or tissue. The ethics of cloning is an extremely controversial issue. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction.
 * a previous comment in the talk page has pointed out contradictions in the wording, but did not know how to fix, so we can work on rewording the opener
 * the contradiction was in the second sentence ("does not refer...reproduction of cells or tissues"), with regards to what content was in the second paragraph("therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells)
 * I'd really like to find a good neutral picture for the article (if that's possible)
 * maybe a picture of SCNT??
 * we can try and work on the opener below:

There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine and transplants, and is an active area of research. Reproductive cloning would involve making cloned humans, for couples wanting to have a child, but cannot naturally.

New Paragraph on Future Uses
I'm not sure if this is too controversial, but I personally think it would be a good idea to put in a paragraph about future uses that human cloning could have in medical advances.
 * infertile women or men could now have a biological child
 * personal stem cells for those who have a disease "super-personalized therapies"
 * reversal of spinal chord injuries
 * testing for genetic diseases

Article One: Human Cloning

 * add a science/methods section. Incorporate science into the article
 * Source: our textbook
 * its only a "start-class" article, although wikiproject medicine says it's B-class
 * talk page doesn't include anything on incorporating science into the article.
 * most recent post is about updating sources and stopping vandalism
 * article is mostly just about countries who have laws for/against human cloning
 * there's also already a "ethics of cloning" page so that doesn't necessarily need to be a major part of this article

Article Two: Cloning

 * rated B-class article, might be hard to make a big impact
 * this article has a lot going on, unnecessarily
 * not much happening on talk page
 * a lot of terminology problems, probably poorly written first draft
 * this might be over our heads and ability to change
 * this article is so mis-matched, it could be broken up into four different articles
 * methods of cloning
 * history of cloning
 * animal/plant cloning
 * popular culture of cloning

Article Three: Cell Differentiation

 * Graded as Start article
 * Talk page has a lot of qualms with the article (one of which is my own)
 * Add more to the mechanisms section
 * Potentially add a section on cadherin function in cell differentiation
 * Sources include: our textbook
 * Expand/add on to signal transduction pathway section
 * add links to RTK pathway, etc.
 * Sources include: our textbook

Article 4: Somatic-Cell Nuclear Transfer

 * Graded as Start article in Wikipedia Genetics Project
 * Talk page has many suggestions for improvement already
 * One of which talks about merging this with Therapeutic cloning, which could potentially be another article we take on
 * The method is only briefly discussed in the process section
 * Sources include: our textbook