User:Siennawu1/Week4

People playing in this sandbox are: Sienna W., Jonathan J., and Priya M.

Epigenetics of physical exercise is in the "S" (Start)-class, meaning it is a preliminary article with plenty of room for improvement. It has a completeness score of 53, meaning that much can be done on the article to expand upon and improve it. Though the average views per day is very low (6), it is still a worthwhile topic to expand upon, as knowledge about this topic could benefit anyone seeking to learn more about the effects of physical exercise on the detailed, molecular parts of their body (whether it be a member of the general public or a scientific researcher).

The beginning paragraph is very long and detailed and does not flow very well in my opinion. I think it could be split up into three paragraphs, and the first sentence could even stand on its own. Afterwards, once the pages starts discussing CpG islands, the paragraph can be divided again. Otherwise, it reads as a huge chunk that is difficult to get through.

There are less citations in this article than most likely needed to prove as a trustworthy source. Many paragraphs get by with around one or two citations, so I think one aspect of improving this article would definitely include finding more evidence to support the claims made - this would be done by going to the articles that have already been cited, and seeing which citations those authors utilized.

Regarding equity gaps, there is nothing found on this page. I wonder if the epigenetics of physical exercise has been studied in different population groups, as that would be interesting and beneficial to include. ***I could not find anything on Pubmed with a quick search, so will have to look deeper into this.

I found a review article titled "Exercise and inflammation-related epigenetic modifications: focus on DNA methylation". The 4.3 section focuses on the epigenetics effects that acute exercise can have, including hypomethylation at the promoter regions of PGC-1α, PDK4, and PPAR-δ following exercise. Because these genes are involved in metabolism and hypomethylation resulted in an increase in transcription, this was seen as favorable outcome. While there is a small section on this in the article already, the information I just presented can be used to improve the section on metabolism. Additionally, the article discusses the interplay between inflammation, exercise, and epigenetics. Exercise has been widely associated with inflammation, and researchers have proposed that even a short but intense exercise session can induce inflammation that leads to unfavorable epigenetic outcomes. Readers may be confused as to how acute exercise can be favorable and unfavorable; thus, this review is needed to clarify and improve the section on metabolism specifically.

I also found an interesting article on how physical activity in pregnant women may affect the epigenome of the offspring. The wiki page currently has no information on how physical activity during pregnancy may affect an offspring's epigenome, so this might be a worthwhile section to add and develop.

Free to a good home
Another potential article to edit is "Epigenetics of depression". This article is a C-class article, meaning that it is an intermediate article with room for improvement. The completeness score is 58, meaning that there is quite some room for expansion and improvement. The average views per day are low (19), but the topic can be important to both medical researchers and general members of the public who wish to find out more about the genome modifications/regulations that are associated with a prevalent mental illness.

First, the article's overall content is relevant to the topic, although it might be beneficial if the authors explained how chronic stress can lead to depression before the "Histone methyltransferase" paragraph. Thus, moving the "HPA Axis" section before the "Histone methyltransferase" section, or at least summarizing a bit of that at the beginning of the body of the text as background knowledge for the reader to know, would achieve this goal.

There is also a citation missing under the "Histone methyltransferase" section at the end, where the author claims that "In general, stress leading to depression is correlated with a decrease in methylation and a decrease in the activity of HMTs". The author can cite source 12 again, as they used it previously in the paragraph to back up their claims.

I was confused at how decreased histone acetylation and decreased histone methylation are both correlated with depression, when I thought that acetylation and methylation acted almost like antagonistic effects on DNA expression. Dr. Atkinson commented that sometimes, histone methylation stimulates while other times, it can repress. I haven't found a review article that covers this yet, but aim to do so if I choose this article to work on.