User talk:Aidan Canil/sandbox

Bacterial Circadian Rhythms Critique

While the article is full of lots of high quality and relevant information there are several clear flaws. The entire introduction is uncited, even though specific facts like those in paragraph 2 are listed. Under the second subheading “History...” there is considerable opinion and reads much more like an essay trying to draw conclusions and inferences than an objective piece. The heading “Adaptive Significance” suffers the same subjectivity and forgoes cited fact for questions and opinion. The Wikipedia article on general circadian rhythms is much more objective and should have been used as a model. Experiments mentioned under this heading, like those with cyanobacteria, are very specific yet have no form of citation or credit to whomever carried out the experiments themselves. Under the heading “visualizing the Clockwork’s...” the first sentence is a very bold, absolute statement talking about a one of a kind protein, yet offers no citation for the claim. Further under that subheading is direct copy and paste plagiarism from a cited article, where the sentence regarding donut shape is taken directly from the journal. The information in the article covered the topic from a variety of angles and properly linked other articles for further reading. Whenever citations were used, they were appropriate and reputable academic journal articles that could all be easily found by their reference at the end of the article. The talk page offers a very brief concern that the citations and references were not properly hyperlinked, but that problem has since been rectified.Aidan Canil (talk) 01:44, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Article Chosen for edit: Syntrophy

I chose this article due to its high notability and importance to microbiology, yet complete lack of structure and depth.

The current microbial content related to rumination is quite well cited and summarized succinctly in the author’s own words, but the second microbial paragraph related to leaves is completely uncited. The literature confirms all the points in the first microbial paragraph, but here is no way to confirm the uncited content, or if it is plagiarized, without having access to the original sources. The main detractor from the Wikipedia article is that it is missing out on many more complex, yet important syntrophic microbial processes. This appears to be since the author wanted a broad introduction of the topic without spending extensive time researching a currently rapidly evolving topic.

To establish some sense of organization within the article, I would place the paragraphs already related to microbes within a new heading called “Microbial Syntrophy,” and then will be adding other important microbial syntrophic processes. These important new topics will include: aromatic compound degradation, oil-degradation, and amino acid degradation. To expand on aromatic compound degradation, I will cite Ferry & Wolfe (1976) and their findings related to syntrophic microbial food chains providing favorable conditions for the degradation of benzoate. Regarding the oil-degradation, I will be citing Callaghan et al., (2012), and their findings based on genome sequencing, who discovered likely evidence of syntrophic metabolism in the alkane breakdown in oil. Finally, I will be citing Zindel et al., (1988), who found indications that syntrophy in relation to interspecies formate transfer played a role in amino acid degradation. I hope this will provide much much-needed depth to the article.

Based on the numerous other primary source, peer reviewed journal articles related to the topic (Archives of Microbiology, Nature, etc.), I am firmly convinced that microbial syntrophy is a significant and notable topic. These articles cover the topic in detail both directly and indirectly, yet still with a significant mention. The articles are also independent of the subject with no affiliation to the topic, only objective experimental results and scientific findings.Aidan Canil (talk) 07:55, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
The edits improved the structure of the article, but further organization is required for coherence. Although the section "Microbial Syntrophy" was added, not all related content was moved there; the introduction still includes an example of microbial syntrophy (human commensals). The dust mite and dung beetle examples should be moved to another section since they’re unnecessary for the topic’s overview.

The examples of microbial syntrophy greatly improve understanding of the content, but aren’t related to more general concepts. Information should be included on ways microbial syntrophy is accomplished, such as exchange of nutrients, reducing agents, and removing compounds toxic to other species. Examples should then be used to further explain these concepts. For example, the paragraph on microbes found in ruminants could be preceded by an explanation of the way that endergonic processes in one species can be coupled to exergonic processes in another, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the community.

Most of this article is clearly written with appropriate tone. However, some parts could be made more concise and organized, such as the paragraph on microbes living in ruminants. This paragraph is long and difficult to follow, making relationships between different community components unclear. Furthermore, some of the language in the article isn’t formal enough, particularly the dung beetle example; “feast” should be replaced by “feed” and the phrase “a cow eats a lot of grass” should be changed.

Most of the content is well cited from textbooks and peer-reviewed articles. However, the final example of microbial syntrophy in soil microbial communities contains no citations and the reference list citation for (Stams et al.,) is absent. Finally, an additional perspective that can be discussed is obligately mutualistic syntrophic microbial relationships. This is briefly mentioned in the soil microbe example but is an important branch of syntrophy which should be further addressed. f Osolodova (talk) 03:33, 9 November 2017 (UTC)