User talk:BarbaraManatee/sandbox

Name of Article
Name of Article about https://whatsinyourbackyard.org/ FlyingOyster (talk) 14:52, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * University of Oklahoma Citizen Science Soil Collection Program Chickennugget99 (talk) 16:11, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Another option would be just Citizen Science Soil Collection Program. Do you think including the "University of Oklahoma" smacks of promotion?FlyingOyster (talk) 16:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If there are no other soil collection programs, this would probably be the better choice. Chickennugget99 (talk) 16:15, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Headings
List of possible headings for the articleFlyingOyster (talk) 15:05, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Origins
 * Discoveries
 * Methods
 * Public Involvement Chickennugget99 (talk) 16:33, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Should the information about the museum collaboration that Ladybug found go under "public involvement"? What else will go here?FlyingOyster (talk) 22:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Origin
The project started in 2010 to research fungi that could potentially help create a type of compound known as a natural product. This is done by obtaining the fungi within a sample of soil, normally collected from a volunteer who mailed it to the program. The program was created at the University of Oklahoma and works with biomedical science researchers as a part of the Natural Products Discovery Group. The goal of this program is to create a natural product with ingredients obtained from various fungi, found in soil, that will help fight against cancer. This program gained traction on social media in 2015 when a member of the site known as Reddit made a post about the program. Since then, users have been sending in their soil samples and sharing updates about the project through comments on the post.

Ladybug1600 (talk) 19:15, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Discoveries
The program has had one major discovery from the samples that have been submitted. The program found the natural product maximiscin. The sample came from a fungi named Tolypocladium. The sample has shown useful anticancer properties, and has inhibited cancer cell growth in mice.

Methods
The samples are obtained through a method that's commonly referred to as crowdsourcing in citizen science, where citizens gather resources and submit them to researchers. After receiving the soil collecting kit, the volunteer can then go into their backyard and pick a spot where they would like to get their sample from. Once the sample has been collected it is sent back to the soil collecting team who then grows the fungi by putting the sample on a petri dish by feeding it food such as grounded worms, tea, and simple sugars. The fungi is later identified by its internal transcribed spacer or ITS found in the DNA that identifies the species and distinguishes it from others. Separated from the soil, the fungus continues to grow in test tubes by feeding on cheerios and later on tested against cancer cells and pathogenic bacteria. The whole process varies from a few days to even years. The desired natural product of the fungi is then extracted through purification using chemical techniques when the sample is moved to grow in a larger bag of cheerios. Once extracted it takes up to weeks or even months to find the chemical structure after which the study and findings are shared with collaborators, typically pharmacologists who specialize in cancer and infectious disease biology.

Cheesecake is Nice (talk) 18:12, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Public Involvement
This program has gained users through multiple crowd-sourcing projects. The first attempt to crowd-source was through the member's, of the program, closet family and friends. The program then gained recognition from a Reddit thread. Link to Reddit Thread The program gained national attention through its users and followers of the YSK thread. The program created a website hub for users to show interest in the project to allow participants to gain access to the kits. Link to Soil Collection Program Website The program was featured in the Science Museum Oklahoma’s smART Space gallery for museum goers to see the program's fungi on display and to show how fungi shape the Earth. BarbaraManatee (talk) 04:19, 12 April 2018 (UTC)