User talk:At1106/sandbox

Peer Review: The Transgenerational Trauma article, specifically the transmission section from this sandbox, does a great job at giving a comprehensive look at this issue through the following sections: History, Symptoms and Treatment, and Transmission. By combining historical relevance with medicine, the readers can clearly see the way in which both genetic and environmental factors contribute to transgenerational trauma. Specifically, the original Transmission section was less than one paragraph and lacking adequate information needed to fully understand how this type of trauma carries across generations. This edited Transmission section is extremely comprehensive, including an explanation of epigenetics, non-coding RNA, and the uterine environment (with an emphasis on the HPA axis).

While the scientific explanations of transgenerational trauma are nearly perfect, I would suggest more of an emphasis of environmental triggers as well. Transgenerational trauma is a great example of how the diathesis stress model (model that describes the interaction between a predispositional vulnerability and a stress caused by life experiences) plays out for different illnesses. Environmental stressors are a key part of diathesis stress model, so elaborating more on those might be beneficial for the article. A description of the diathesis stress model itself may be helpful as well. In general, the most important thing that the author could do to improve this article is strike a balance between scientific explanation and the environmental stressors behind transgenerational trauma, as the current edits are heavily on the scientific explanations. Since my article is Chronic Condition, I think that the diathesis stress model could be mentioned in my article as well since many chronic conditions come about from a combination of genetic and environmental stressors.

Overall: The article’s lead is straight to the point, yet strong The article’s structure flows well and key sections are included to properly understand the concept There is somewhat a balance of viewpoints, but heavily scientific Length of “Transmission” section is improved to the point that the reader fully understand this subject Neutral tone and content achieved Sources are reliable and accessible

Sela's peer review:

I really like how you took a biological approach to this topic and included so much research and information on the topic. It’s a huge improvement from the original Transmission section of this article and I love what you’ve done with it. I have very minimal edits because I think what you did is great!

First, as someone who doesn’t really have any background knowledge on biology, some of the information was lost on me. It may be helpful to add in a sentence describing epigenetic imprinting in really simple terms in the first paragraph so that users without biological knowledge can get a general sense of this school of thought. This could be helpful with every main topic introduced/method of transmission discussed, but this is the one place that stood out to me the most.

It might also be helpful to break up the second paragraph into two smaller ones, having the second one start when the topic of DNA methylation is introduced. I only suggest this because it’s relatively long for wiki, and since it’s a pretty dense scientific topic it may be helpful to separate the two topics for clarity (especially if any readers are skimming, as they often do on wiki).

Also a super small change: in the last paragraph, I think you need commas in the places I added: “The uterine environment, with its unique blend of the mother’s cellular secretions and proteins, is a major source of stimuli.”

These are all pretty small things, but I think the most important change that could be made is adding in a sentence or two to explain some of these topics in non-scientific terms. Odds are that most users going to this page won’t understand all the terms or look them up, so quick little summaries of each topic might be helpful for readers hoping to skim for info on transmission. Again, I really like what you did with this page - super thorough and such an improvement from the original article!