Wikipedia:USEP/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg SP14/Group 82C

Tmo32 Progress Report

 * Spent hours re-reading research papers and finding more updated references. I found 7 new articles to replace the 6 that were outdated. I did my best to keep the content consistent, re-wrote sections where appropriate, removed the old citations and cited the new references.
 * Attempted another edit of the intro to make it more understandable.
 * Added substantial content to the cancer sub-section. I kept it general in an effort to include the broadest applications of minigenes in cancer. Checked content for originality at turnitin.com.
 * Reorganized the history section
 * Re-read all reviewers' comments and instituted any unmade, applicable changes that I could. Special thanks to the following reviewers for their helpful feedback:
 * Klortho - detailed suggestions on the intro rewrite
 * Keilana - caught the outdated citations issue, explained it and answered our questions
 * Neelix - initial review and helpful suggestions on formatting and style

Tmo32 (talk) 00:03, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Deacon C Progress Report
I am working on the changes and am almost finished, but I cannot post them until Tuesday. I am just overwhelmed with work. The changes I am working on are for the construction section and type section. I also want to include some bioinformatics links for splicing programs than act as predictor models. After this, I am done. I think we should change the opening paragraph of the article one last time: the use of splice for cloning and splice for spliceosome splicing is too confusing. I read it myself and saw how one could get lost. I will change it to reflect that introducing a segment into foreign DNA is cloning and the product produced by pre-mRNA splicing is referred to as splicing.
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I know - this last week has been brutal all around! I did my best to clarify the intro today and address all the reviewers' concerns. I'll be plugged-in through Tuesday, so let me know if you need any help with anything or would like me to address anything else.
 * I ran my new cancer section through turnitin, just in case! Let me know if you'd like me to run any of your sections through when you're done editing.
 * Good luck with this week again!
 * Tmo32 (talk) 23:41, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Finished the drawing and inserted it into the "Construction" section. Edited "Introduction", "Types" and "Construction" sections. I added a few more references and web sites to improve the accuracy of the edited parts. I am done,"veni, vidi, vici"...all with Tiffany's help of course.
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 19:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Tmo32 progress

 * Drafting rewrite of intro to be more readable (at "smart high school level") per Klortho's review.
 * Reviewing article for consistency and readability
 * Researched edit history to track changes
 * Researching medical article reference rules
 * Continuing to respond to editors and make changes as requested, when appropriate

Deacon C progress

 * Hi Tiffany,
 * My apologies and thank you for your rapid response. I don't know, maybe I did it inadvertently when I added another link ? Anyway, I left a note on Keilana's talk page which is copied below...


 * "Hi Keilana,


 * I have a question about the review you did for the JHU Molecular Biology articles. This particular article was entitled "minigenes". In your review you stated that sourced material for a medical article needed to be no older than five years and must be a review article. The minigene article is a mixed usage article about basic research and medical uses. I was wondering if only the medical sections of the article or the entire article had to meet the guidelines for sources. Could you respond ASAP ? We need to correct the article before for the next review.


 * P.S. I know what you mean about getting slammed with homework.


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 20:47, 24 April 2014 (UTC)"


 * She is pretty busy, but let's hope she answers quickly. I the meantime I will put the links back in.


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 20:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Tiffany,
 * Keilana has already responded, "@Deacon C: The guideline only covers the medical sections. Good luck with the rest of the article! :::Keilana|Parlez ici 22:31, 24 April 2014 (UTC)". If we follow these guidelines and assume only the medically related paragraphs, then we have to change (by my count):


 * 8. Lou, H; R F Gagel (1998). "Alternative RNA processing – its role in regulating expression of calcitonin/calcitonin gene-related peptide". Journal of Endocrinology 156 (3): 401–405..


 * 10. McCarthy, Elanor; John A. Phillips III (1998). "Characterization of an Intron Splice Enhancer that Regulates Alternative Splicing of Human GH Pre-mRNA". Human Molecular Genetics 7 (9): 1491–1496..


 * 12. Dawson, Hana N.; Viviana Cantillana, Liling Chen, and Michael P. Vitek (2007). "The Tau N279K Exon 10 Splicing Mutation Recapitulates Frontotemporal Dementia and Parkinsonism Linked to Chromosome 17 Tauopathy in a Mouse Model". Neurobiology of Disease 27 (34): 9155–9168. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5492-06.2007.


 * 13. Jiang, Zhihong; Jocelyn Cote, Jennifer M. Kwon, Alison M. Goate and Jane Y. Wu (2000). "Aberrant Splicing of tau Pre-mRNA Caused by Intronic Mutations Associated with the Inherited Dementia Frontotemporal Dementia with Parkinsonism Linked to Chromosome 17". Mol. Cell. Biol. 20 (11): 4036–4048. doi:10.1128/MCB.20.11.4036-4048.2000.


 * 15. Collis, S. J.; A. Tighe, S. D. Scott, S. A. Roberts, J. H. Hendry and G. P. Margison (2001). "Ribozyme minigene-mediated RAD51 down-regulation increases radiosensitivity of human prostate cancer cells". Nucleic Acids Research 29 (7): 1534–1538. doi:10.1093/nar/29.7.1534.


 * 16. Ma, Y.; Wu B, Xie J, You J, Liu J, Cui X, Wang J, Hui P. (2000). "Effect of mouse p53 minigene on lung cancer cells with different 172 structures regulated by tetracycline". Zhonghua Bing Li Xue Za Zhi (Chinese Journal of Pathology) 29 (5): 359..


 * The rest of the articles seem to be okay as far as I can tell. I am adding drawings to the article.


 * Take Care,


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 21:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Chris! I am still not sure on this one. I don't think these are medical - they are research papers trying to determine how diseases manifest, but is that really medical? Maybe I'm making an industry distinction that doesn't apply here, but research versus application (treatment/medicine/diagnostics) are very different things. These papers do talk about diseases and the use of life science tools in researching the diseases, but is that considered medical? They don't talk about treatment or give any medical advice that is outdated. We do cover potential medical uses of minigenes in the cancer section and those references are dated 2012 and 2013. Does this makes sense to you or do you still think that we need to change all those references? Tmo32 (talk) 00:31, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * When I'm done with the rewrite, I'll try to find more updated references on these topics, begrudgingly :); I still don't understand 100% why it's necessary. Thanks for all the work you did with the image by the way - it looks great! I'll submit my rewrite Sunday afternoon; my assistant at work is leaving and my head is going to be exploding from now until at least Sunday morning. Tmo32 (talk) 00:58, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Deacon C further update

 * Tiffany we have to change these or WE WILL GET SLAPPED. I know how you feel, you have put so much work into these, but I think that one could find corresponding articles of newer date and really not have to rewrite the sections, since the basic facts have probably not changed. I have been doing so much Molecular Biology that I have neglected my computer final and I can't do it anymore. This is going to be a bad week for me, too. I wanted to finish the drawings, but I was still working on the individual assignment. I swear its a minimum of 5 hours a day of homework lately. The drawing should go faster all the basic shapes are finished and it just a matter of formatting and copying them to show various amplification schemes. I am going to rewrite construction and types so don't worry about this, but I can't add anymore sections, there just is not enough time this semester. Most importantly, keep in contact, let me know if something is starting to slip and I can help.
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 00:21, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Tmo32, Unit 12
Hi Chris! I edited the article, passed it through turnitin.com, expanded the "types" section and added a history section. The submission was 19% similar to other sources. 17% of that 19% was another paper submitted by a JHU student (our paper I assume, so not a big deal) and the rest was a similarity to a website that talks about neurodegenerative diseases. It defines the same diseases I do in the same order, but there isn't really another way to say what I'm saying - in fact, I'm surprised it only pulled one source. Plus, it's just a list of diseases and doesn't contribute much to the point of the sentence. You can choose to switch it up if you want, but I didn't because I didn't think it was worth it.

Please review the article when you can and let me know if you have any questions about my edits. I tried not to change your stuff up too much, but I tried to make it flow better as a whole. Feel free to revert my changes back to your original content or change generally as you see fit.

I hope you have a good weekend! I'm leaving for vacation today, but will check my email and try to keep up if you have any questions or ne ed anything.

Thanks! Tmo32 (talk) 19:43, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Reply
Hi Tiffany, I don't know why the "see also" links were removed. I spent a while looking through these and thinking if they belonged in the article or not. Did I inadvertently do this or did you do this ? Please answer.


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 21:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Chris. No I did not change any part of the "see also" links in my editing. No sure how that happened, I'll take a look at the editing history.
 * Tmo32 (talk) 01:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Deacon C, Unit 12
Hi Tiffay,
 * I thought it might be easier to answer here on the page about unit 12 plans. We can then modify this section as they get checked off. If you have not read Keilana's review, then have a look at it on the talkpage of minigene; it only came in yesterday, so you may not have had a chance to see it yet. We need to address that the minigene article has medical content and, as such, is subject to different rules on references than a normal article. In my response to Keilana, I asked for clarification since the article is of mixed content (research/medical). If you don't see anything on the minigene talk page in a day or so, would you put an issue on her talk page and ask for clarification ? After that, the to do list is...


 * Correct opening sentence and make it more of a summary. I will do this today. I did not like leaving it the way it was and it was starting to make me nervous, so I am definitely fixing it now !
 * We need to look at the links and make sure none are broken and that they conform to what the assignment calls for.
 * Add references to construction. Initially I thought I had 1 and 2 as references, bu they may have been erased when I edited the article. I will take care of this.
 * Correct Stamm's web site template. I will do this.
 * Add pictures. I am taking care of this.


 * I was not able to find any history on minigenes in PubMed either. I will look through the first pages of the books on minigenes I recommended using Amazon preview and see if there is any content here. I will tell you what I find. I wish I had more time. Tomorrow, I will try and work on the page all day.


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 19:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Update:


 * I changed the wording of the opening sentence, it flows better and is not close to the source.
 * I added two references in construction.
 * Added link to Alternative Splicing.
 * P.S. If you want to read it all the way through, then go ahead. Could you also run the whole thing through Turnitin and let me know what you get ?


 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 22:18, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Tiffany Morris, Unit 11

 * Made changes to my sections per reviewer comments.
 * Searched for images of minigenes that we could use.
 * Began researching the discovery/history of minigenes to see if I could find enough content to create a new section - will continue working on this going into Unit 12.

Deacon C, Unit 11

 * Responded to both article reviews by Crandel5425 and Keilana...did not lose temper even though I knew what needed to be fixed,but did not have time to address it yet. Just kidding, actually Keilana's review was very helpful in an editorial way.
 * Reviewed assigned article, "Aminoallyl nucleotide". This was actually an interesting article.
 * Added three more book listings and made some corrections to the introductory paragraph.
 * Worked on illustrations for article.
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 19:39, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Christopher Progress, Unit 9
Summary: The page still needs a lot of work and of course the current product never looks like the final page you have in your mind. Still, I think that the page will look quite nice when finished. Planning to add infobox, diagram of minigene construction and "use of bioinformatics in minigene design" section.
 * Added content to the construction of minigene section.
 * Made all the corrections to the page that were suggested in the talk section and on the page itself.
 * Reviewed the article, "Capping Enzyme" for initial review assignment.
 * Added "gene ontology and minigenes section" to article, but this was removed by someone. I think I may have incorrectly phrased somethings that the reviewer didn't understand and removed the section as not being relevant.
 * Added additional reading section.
 * Added external links section.

Tiffany Progress, Unit 8
In addition to posted prose:
 * Found, read and cataloged 12 more references specific to minigene applications
 * Wrote additional, unposted, draft content
 * Registered at Turnitin.com

Christopher Progress, Unit 8

 * Created infobox template and stored it on a new sandbox page.
 * Practiced loading images into article.
 * Downloaded Inkscape and Gene Palette software to help create images for the article.
 * Registered at Turnitin.com and reviewed the content for originality. The article scored 20% similarity, but both
 * similarities occurred in the quoted elements, so this is fine.


 * Brought article into main Wikipedia section under the title "Minigene".
 * Contacted Neelix, the online ambassador, to review initial offering and clear it.

Group Rationale
After reviewing the remaining topics in the table, we decided on Minigenes. The criteria we used to evaluate the topics included: Importantly, Minigene was an unclaimed topic when we began our selection process. Initially we had several available candidates from the list: DNA adducts, Chemical modifications, Capping enzymes, Minigene, Acetyltransferase and Dicer. Chemical modifications was too broad; DNA adducts was not particularly interesting. One of us had worked with Capping enzymes (Bioinformatics), Actetyltransferase and Dicer (Molecular Genetics) previously, so Minigene looked like an opportunity to work with a new subject. Minigenes are relatively new molecular tools that allow researchers to better understand splicing regulation and its downstream effects on gene expression. We found this topic interesting as it involved cutting-edge research that could be applied to the elucidation of disease mechanisms across a wide variety of diseases. Neither of us knew much about minigenes, so the topic also presented an opportunity for us to learn more about an intriguing and unfamiliar subject. The Minigene page hasn't been created yet, so this topic also gives a chance to create a site and take it to a very advanced or finished state. It also gives us more freedom in content generation and the chance to make a greater contribution to information available on Wikipedia The pointer for beginning our search is linked in the topic list to the University of Kentucky, Stamms lab web-site where research on minigene is discussed in detail and the potentiality to get input from researchers in the field exsists. We concluded that the amount of information available would be sufficient to help us draft valuable content about minigenes for Wikipedia readers. Further a quick look at Pub Med shows that there are 1382 items related to minigene just for the year 2013, so it is of current importance. None of the other available topics met our evaluation criteria as well as Minigenes did, so it is our selection.
 * 1) Availability
 * 1) Our level of interest
 * 1) Existing content on Wikipedia
 * 1) Amount of information available online

Deacon C rationale
Initially we had several candidates from the list: DNA adducts, Chemical modifications, Capping enzymes, Minigene, Acetyltransferase and Dicer. A review of four of the six listed topics was preformed below. As I stated in my review, Chemical modifications was too broad; DNA adducts was not particularly interesting. I had worked with Capping enzymes (Bioinformatics) and Actetyltransferase and Dicer (Molecular Genetics) previously, so Minigene looked like an opportunity to work with a new subject. The Minigene page hasn't been created yet, so this topic also gives a chance to create a site and take it to a very advanced or finished state. The pointer for beginning our search is linked in the topic list to the University of Kentucky, Stamms lab web-site where research on minigene is discussed in detail and can act as expert review for our article. Further a quick look at Pub Med shows that there are 1382 items related to minigene just for the year 2013, so it is topical, too.

Tmo32 rationale
After reviewing the remaining topics in the table, we decided on Minigenes. The criteria we used to evaluate the topics included:
 * 1) Availability
 * 2) Our level of interest
 * 3) Existing content on Wikipedia
 * 4) Amount of information available online.

Importantly, minigenes were an unclaimed topic when we began our selection process.

Minigenes are relatively new molecular tools that allow researchers to better understand splicing regulation and its downstream effects on gene expression. We found this topic interesting as it involved cutting-edge research that could be applied to the elucidation of disease mechanisms across a wide variety of diseases. Neither of us knew much about minigenes, so the topic also presented an opportunity for us to learn more about an intriguing and unfamiliar subject.

There is not any content about minigenes on Wikipedia, which gives us more freedom in content generation and the chance to make a greater contribution to information available on Wikipedia.

A simple Google search leads to several research papers written about studies that employ use of minigenes. We concluded that the amount of information available would be sufficient to help us draft valuable content about minigenes to Wikipedia readers.

None of the other available topics met our evaluation criteria as well as Minigenes did, so it is our selection.

Tmo32 and Deacon C "battle it out" for topic preference
Hi Tiffany, as we discussed by email (I now see that we have to put it in our group page, actually) I don't think that either of the articles I reviewed would be a good choice. Chemical modifications is too broad and DNA adducts is not that interesting to me. Maybe you could describe how you feel about your articles and we can describe how we came up with our choice.
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 03:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Chris, thanks for your input. I was a fan of the dicer topic, but one of our classmates has already taken that subject. Acetyltransferases is rather broad and wouldn't be very exciting to author. I imagine it would simply be compiling a summary of the more specific acetyltransferases and making some general statements about the enzyme family as a whole to tie it together. I want to make sure we pick an interesting topic, so we can have some fun! Tmo32 (talk) 19:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Tiffany, sorry I crashed and burned this weekend...flÜ. Luckily I got the flu shoot a couple of weeks ago, or I believe I would have been in the hospital. I didn't add the graph yet, that is why it didn't appear; I still have to assemble the data from Pub Med. I thought there was a way to make a quick "trending" graph like one can do on Google, but the librarian was unable to help me. So maybe I will have to go year by year on my own and look at the citations. Sooooo, as I recall we narrowed the whole thing down to Capping enzymes and Minigene. I spent all last semester working on the capping enzyme of sheep pox virus (D2 small sub-unit) with brilliant insight into the FASTA nucleic and amino acid codes, but little enthusiasm to continue on with said topic. So I vote for Minigene. The gauntlet has been thrown down...admit it, you can't resist my logic!!!


 * ♠ 68.96.87.42 (talk) 02:56, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Tiffany, I have some good news for our project: I wrote Dr. Ogg a letter asking her if it was okay to ask any experts to review our page on minigenes and she replied, "...Yes, you can ask the group to review your work or the OAs would be a good source for review, before grading..."
 * ♠ Deacon C (talk) 02:54, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Acetyltransferase
This article provides minimal information. It is not on a topic that is of high importance or impact to a large number of readers, though some may find it interesting. It does not have any citations, only external links. The links to external sites are helpful as are the handful of wikipedia page links for specific acetyltransferases. Perhaps acetyltransferases is too general of a topic? Alternatively, a broad synopsis could be written that defines the general role of acetyltransferases in different biochemical reactions and includes mention of the other acetyltransferases with links to the individual pages. There isn't any discussion on how to improve the article on the talk pages, but it is mentioned that the topic is only of mild importance. Potential references include, and.

Dicer
The dicer wikipedia page has basic information and includes inline citations. It goes a bit beyond a stub article and is classified as a start article. It doesn't provide in-depth information and could use a lot more detail. It could also use more links, e.g. to siRNA and TRBP, help with formatting and style. More fact checking could also be useful as one error was already identified and corrected according to the talk page. A picture was described incorrectly, so an editor replaced the picture with one that fit the description. Additional references may include:, and

Chemical modification
This article is a very broad overview of chemical modifications including:"Chemical modifications in chemistry", "Chemically modified electrodes", "Chemical modifications in biochemistry" and "Chemical modifications of nucleic acids". When I look at the bottom of the article, it says, "This protein-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." This leads me to think that the major thrust of this improvement would expand the Biochemistry area (with its subsection "protein side-chain modifications") and while not protein related, perhaps the Nucleic Acid section as well. The "talk page" lists the article as a stub, being of mild importance and that, "This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology." The basic problem with this article is that it is too broad; I feel it will never reach FA or GA status as it tries to cover too wide a range of topics under the heading of "Chemical modification" to provide the in-depth details needed to be useful. It really would be better to break out each section into a separate page and then concentrate on improving that. I do like the fact that there is a "Protein structural analysis" section which provides links to many useful techniques, as well as, the resolution expected from each technique. As I said, the meaningful contribution our group could make to this page would be to the biochemistry section with particular emphasis on protein side-chain modifications; along these lines I am thinking of histone modifications, allosteric modifications in enzymes  and modification of proteins to make them detectable in the cell , as examples. Along the lines of DNA modifications, I am thinking of methylation and deamination.

DNA adduct
DNA adduct is a short article with three references and a couple of diagrams: one showing a benzopyrene adduct; the other showing a 2-aminoflourene adduct. It is not a stub, but it is in the start stages. The talk page for this article states that, "This article is of interest to the following WikiProjects: WikiProject Genetics(Start-class); WikiProject Medicine(Start-class, Low-importance); WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology (Start-class, Mid-importance)". One user on the talk page posited that the page needed "expert" input as, "The definition makes it seem as if a chunk was separated from DNA and bound to a chemical". The page definitely suffers from lack of mechanistic detail, both in the realm of adduct formation and how the subsequent stability of the DNA and cellular function are affected. I definitely see need for mechanistic review of adduct formation and maybe some the consequences for cellular toxicity and other disease factors induced by adduct formation. The list of chemicals which can form adducts with DNA could be expanded and a section detailing medical tests for adducts added. If this is going to be a first-stop for someone looking for information on "DNA adducts", these corrections would help.