Wikipedia:Peer review/Discovery and development of TRPV1 antagonists/archive1

Discovery and development of TRPV1 antagonists
This peer review discussion has been closed. We are a group of pharmacy students from Iceland. This article was created as part of a class project for a course on drug design. We would like to have this article reviewed to see how we did and also to help make the article better.

Thanks, Hopur2-2009 (talk) 12:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This stuff is right up my alley, I'm currently working on a research project involving TRPV1 receptors. I'll leave some comments in a day or 2. Sasata (talk) 15:11, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

History
 * The intro paragraph currently reads like an intro for a school essay, where some general statements are made to introduce the topic, and then finally lead to a sentence where the rationale for the essay is justified. Wikipedia lead (or "lede") paragraphs are formatted differently, see WP:lede, especially the part on "Introductory text". The last sentence of the current lede needs to be removed, as it violates wp:crystal ball, a policy that prevents making suppositions about the importance of something, or attempts to predict the future. A good way to go about writing the lead is to try to summarize each one of the article's sections in 1 or 2 sentences, and keep the language deliberately simple, as if you were writing for a "bright high school student". Don't be afraid to use wikilinks to unfamiliar terminology.
 * "In 1919 the exact chemical structure of capsaicin was determined and the complete synthesis of the compound was achieved a decade later. " citations to the original papers would be ideal
 * "...preclinical studies showed evidence of its importance in numerous human diseases." such as?
 * "These are the first agents acting by this mechanism that made their way into clinic for evaluation of their use as possible analgesics and therefore important targets for drug development." This sentence is awkward. It is unclear what are the first agents?
 * "Many discoveries are yet to be made, both in terms of the range of potential therapeutic applications in addition to analgesia for TRPV1 antagonists and it was only in the last decade where there has been a full understanding of the molecular mechanism. In the years to come it will be clearer if TRPV1 antagonists can fulfill their potential." This needs to be reworded as it currently violates WP:Crystal ball
 * captions in Wikipedia do not need to explicitly state "Figure x"; see wp:captions
 * The history section seems to be very underdeveloped. Since the article is title "Discovery and development of ..." I would expect this section to be much more substantial.
 * Allow me to clarify this point: I think the article could be improved by giving more background and history—mention some key papers published between 1918 and now, and tell a story about how they cumulatively contributed to our current knowledge of the topic. As an added bonus, you could then gently introduce some of the jargon that will appear soon after, which will increase reader accessibility for this complex topic. Sasata (talk) 20:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Vanilloid receptor 1 (VR1/TRPV1 receptor)
 * in general, the whole article suffers from an excess of technical jargon, and would be nearly impossible for anyone without a background in biochemistry to understand; in its current state the article would not pass WP:GA because of this. I suggest going through the article line-by-line, analyzing each sentence to see if it can rephrased in a way that a non-biochemistry student can understand. The balance is tricky, to increase accessibility to all readers, but still maintain scientific accuracy.
 * "The vanilloid receptor (TRPV1) is one of six sub-members..." why is it a sub-member and not just a member?
 * superfamily - very few outside molecular biology will understand what this word means, and unfortunately there's no wiki article for it yet, so it will have to be explained.
 * wlink transmembrane, ligand, N-termini, C-termini, signalling cascade, inflammatory mediators; algogenic agent needs definition
 * a cartoon diagram of the TRPV1 receptor would work wonders here, it there one available?
 * RTX leads to a disambiguation page... make sure that new acryonyms are defined
 * give conversion values for temperatures; see template:convert for one way to do it, or if you prefer, just calculate by hand
 * "It is generally accepted that capsaicin acts on and binds to the TRPV1 receptor from the intracellular side prior to activation." The phrase "generally accepted" is considered "weaselly, and is best backed up with a citation directly after the sentence.
 * "The critical sites for capsaicin binding are Arg 114 and Glu 761..." This is another example of biochemistry shorthand that few will understand. It's better to introduce the terminology like this: "The critical sites for capsaicin binding are the arginine and glutamate amino acid residues at positions 114 and 761 of the polypeptide chain (Arg 114 and Glu 761)..." then the reader knows what you're talking about and you can use the abbreviations after that.
 * "Because these two amino acids are charged..." need to explain "charged" for the novice
 * "The TM3 region is considered to be necessary..." considered by who? Again, Wp:weasel

Ok I'm going to stop there for now, because I think you'll get the picture. Overall, the information seems accurate, and it seems like it would make a good university essay, but more work is required to help it conform to Wikipedia guidelines. If you'd like, leave me a message when you've worked through the article, and I'd be happy to read through it again. The prose could use a copyedit too, but that can be done prior to submitting for GAN. Sasata (talk) 19:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)