Wikipedia:Peer review/Michaelis–Menten kinetics/archive1

Michaelis–Menten kinetics
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because it's recently had a big overhaul. I don't think it's near good article standard yet, but would appreciate feedback to move it in that direction.

Thanks, U+003F? 14:07, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

RJH Comments: Overall this article seems a tad technical, so it might not be approachable by the widest audience. I'm not quite sure what you can do about that though. Here's a few comments that I hope are useful:
 * For the "Reaction rate as a function of substrate concentration" caption, it should clarify that this illustration is an example, rather than being exactly the same for all reactions.
 * I think your lead could use a better (more expanded) explanation than is given by the first sentence. Also, including a mention of who it was named after (right in the middle of the sentence) breaks the reading flow somewhat. Unpacking the meaning of Vmax[S] was initially distracting. Alternatively, you could write something like: "...by relating reaction rate V to [S], the concentration of the substrate S; its formula is given by..."
 * Ah, well I didn't quite mean to suggest you should get rid of the mention of who it was named after. I just thought it would read better if that were in a separate sentence.
 * Why is this specific to biochemistry, rather than chemistry in general?
 * Because it's about enzymes, rather than catalysts in general. I couldn't think of a good way to clarify this in the article.


 * Some FAC reviewers like the mentioned individuals to also be identified by nationality and profession. Hence, "American biochemist Leonor Michaelis". Likewise, "Briggs and Haldane" could also be expanded to include full names.
 * Per the MoS, the em-dashes (—) shouldn't be space separated from the surrounding text. (Either that or you could switch to using space-separated en-dashes [–]).
 * "However, due to the high concentration of protein in a cell, its cytoplasm often behaves more like a gel than a liquid, limiting molecular movements and altering reaction rates." This sentence seems a bit disjointed, as it seems to be missing some connectivity with the surrounding text. Perhaps it could say, "However, in the environment of a living cell where there is a high concentration of protein, the cytoplasm often behaves more like a gel..."?
 * "fractal approaches" is unexplained.
 * I didn't want to get into too much detail on this, quite minor, point. I reordered the words to, hopefully, make it more clear.


 * "The resulting reaction rates predicted by the two approaches are similar..." Does this mean "law of mass action" vs. "fractal approaches", or does it mean "Michaelis-Menten equilibrium analysis" vs. "Briggs-Haldane quasi-steady-state analysis"? I'm guessing the latter, but the preceding paragraph in the article makes this ambiguous.
 * "...the quality of the approximation improves as ε decreases." Why the switch from the lowercase epsilon to the lunate epsilon?
 * "108 – 1010 M−1 s−1" Per the MoS, this shouldn't be allowed to wrap in the browser. You might want to enclose it with a undefined template, or else use &amp;nbsp;; tags.
 * In the references, to be consistent the "Zhou, HX.", "Minton, AP." and "Turner, TE." should be "Zhou, H.X.", "Minton, A.P." and "Turner, T.E."
 * In general, is this considered an important approximation in the chemistry and/or biochemistry industry? Is it widely used in certain processes? It is difficult to judge based upon the content of the article.
 * It's common in biochemistry. But, again, I wasn't sure how to clarify this in the article.
 * I'm finding a few book sources that seem to indicate the relative importance of this model (and the most important exceptions).

Regards, RJH (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Mmm... not done because you disagree?&mdash;RJH (talk)
 * No my bad. ❌ was a placeholder for "doing" U+003F? 19:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay. I wanted to check in case I had acquired a misunderstanding with some of the suggestions. Thank you.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I've had a go at addressing most of your comments. Does it come across any better? U+003F? 15:05, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you.&mdash;RJH (talk) 19:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)