Wikipedia talk:USEP/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg SP14/Group 82H

Article selection rationale from Lxu27
We selected the article histone acetylation and deacetylation based on the fact that it is an important regulatory mechanism that affects most nucleosomes. The acetylation status of a nucleosome is important for many cellular processes. This includes, transcription, DNA replication, DNA repair and heterochromatin formation.

Furthermore, it is a relatively new field and there are many research taking place in this area, therefore, provided us with plenty of latest materials to work with. Even more interesting, multiple evidences suggest histone acetyl- transferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs) play important roles in different diseases pathology attracts our interest on this regulatory process and its potential as therapeutic target.


 * Hey! I completely missed that the rationale was a group writing and not an individual one. Sorry! I think you have a great one started! I made a few changes to your idea and i'll combine mine in with yours. You're totally right though, we can get more in detail later. Hopefully i didn't mess up the citations too badly. Let me know what you think!
 * No worries. I think it looks good. I will post it on the project page. Luyao Kevin Xu (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * We may have a slight problem. We only have 185 words, so we have to add in another sentence or two. Are there any other points you want to make or reasons you want to give? BigA726 (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

[We selected the article Histone Acetylation and Deacetylation due to the fact that it is an important regulatory mechanism that affects a majority of nucleosomes. The acetylation status of a nucleosome is important in many cellular processes including transcription, DNA replication, DNA repair and heterochromatin formation. Furthermore, it is a relatively new field of study with many different research projects taking place, therefore providing us with plenty of material with which to work. Though a new field, already multiple evidences suggest histone acetyl-transferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs) play roles in different disease pathologies which attracts us to this regulatory process and its potential as a therapeutic target. It is these aspects of acetylation and deacetylation that make it a very effective and important process not only in the knowldge base of this class, but also in the field of molecular biology as a whole. By choosing this article, its not only partaking in an assignment where we'll learn about an important subject for this class now, but its also an investment in our knowledge for future classes, applications, and endeavors in this field. ] BigA726 (talk) 22:26, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Article selection rationale from BigA726
Acetylation of different amino acids on histone tails can have varying effects based on which amino acids are acetylated and where. If the lysine amino acid at positions 8 and 16 are signals for the start sites of specific genes. Acetylation of lysines 5 and 12 are signals for newly made H4 molecules that can be incorporated into parts of histones. Aside from specific interactions of amino acids, acetylation can have important effects on the overall charge of histone tails. Acetylation of lysine in the histone tails neutralizes the amino acids’ positive charge which can lead to different effects such as reducing the attraction of the histones to DNA backbones or even interfering with histones becoming part of the 30-nm fiber. It is these aspects of acetylation, and in turn deacetylation, that make it a very effective and important process not only in the knowledge base of this class, but also in the field of molecular biology as a whole. By choosing this article, its not only partaking in an assignment where I’ll learn about an important subject for this class now, but its also an investment in my knowledge for future classes and endeavors in this field. BigA726 (talk) 00:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Choosing A Topic
Hey Kevin! I took a look at the two choices you sent me. It seems another group has already called Dicer. I think both of your choices are great though. The Protein Inhibitor of Activated STAT seems like it'd be easy to organize. We could start out with outlining the STAT Pathway, and then move into each of the different inhibitors, explain what they do, how, where and why. However, i think your other choice, the Histone Acetylation and Deacetylation would be a great choice for the class since it ties in so closely to what we've already gone over. Do you think that one article would be more difficult than another? Do you think it'd be harder to find scientific articles for one or another? Both of your choices sound great though! BigA726 (talk) 15:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Adam, like you said, I think histone acetylation is a very interesting topic and it will be a good topic for us to work on since we already have the basics covered. I think for both topics there are plenty of materials to work with. And from what I have seen on pubmed, Histone Acetylation and Deacetylation is the better topic since many researchers are focusing on this area. In turns of difficulty, it is relevant to our materials in the class so should be very straight forward. If you agree, we can go ahead and already pick out the topic and start doing search. Let me know you thoughts.Luyao Kevin Xu (talk) 16:30, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey Kevin, i agree, i think we would get a lot of benefit out of doing the Histone article. I'll attempt to try and edit the article table as a way of claiming that article.BigA726 (talk) 16:52, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Adam, I see you already have the rationale up here. Since it is graded for group effort, I think I will just add a little bit more information to it and edit it. I think your rationale is very well written. And we should be fine. Luyao Kevin Xu (talk) 22:55, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I posted your original post of the article selection rationale here as a reference. I think we should focus on the rationale before going into the details. So please take a look at my response and edit it accordingly. I will add this by the end of the night. Luyao Kevin Xu (talk) 20:46, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of Important Topics
Hi Professor Ogg! Kevin and I actually ended up having this conversation in my sandbox. We combined the conversation on the outline with the important points we thought we'd want to talk about. I didn't want to copy and paste our whole conversation, so i thought i'd just leave a note! BigA726 (talk) 01:38, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note, makes it easier for me to find things ; ) Sherry Ogg (talk) 17:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that we have things all grouped together in Adam's sandboxLuyao Kevin Xu (talk) 21:20, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Unit 10 Progress Report
Hi Professor Ogg! Part of our progress report was posted on the talk page of our article. We definitely came a long way from the first review. Both Kevin and I took a lot of the reviewers suggestions and ended up modifying a lot of the article. I ended up completely redoing the HDAC section of the article so as to have a more effective organization and flow of how the information was presented. I also took the chance to add more sources to the section so that the information was verified in multiple places. I plan on reevaluating the HAT section over the course of the next week so as to have the same improvement in that section as well. Overall i think our article needs a bit more work, but i think we're on the right track to having a winning article by the end of the course!BigA726 (talk) 15:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Final Progress Report (Unit 14)
Over the course of the project, my partner and I have made considerable contributions to our article. After starting with just a small lead section and a title, we have come a long way.


 * 1) After obtaining the article with hardly any meaningful content at all, we have added a considerable amount of vital information to the topic. My partner and I have contributed to making this article easy to understand, but still portray a large amount of information. This involved describing the topic from the basics, and then building upon them so that all areas were covered for full understanding. We have included a mechanism and a breakdown of each family of HAT and HDAC molecules. Each family is divided into classes and families, and these topics were futher explained in individual components. We have also expanded past that to the effects of having these modifications in different scenarios. These scenarios include regular situations such as gene expression and transcription control to more drastic effects such as cancer and psychological disorders.
 * 2) The pictures that we have added are simple and help with the understanding of the article. Our initial picture that we have included gives the overview of the structure in which the entire contents of the article takes place. The second image is a visual representation of what is described in the section it was added. It gives the reader a visual understanding of the process our article is about and effectively gives a different perspective at which to understand what we’ve written.
 * 3) Over the course of the project, as well as in the past two weeks, I have made sure that our article is as grammatically correct and free of spelling errors as I possibly could. At the same time, I took the liberty of adding a plethora of wikilinks to the article. In doing so, I think this considerably helps the reader in understanding some of the more esoteric terms that may arise in the article. Although I did get many terms linked, there are still a few terms that are not included in Wikipedia.
 * 4) We have made sure to follow the guildlines for Wikipedia as closely as we could. We included information in the article in as unbiased a way as possible while making sure that all the information that we obtained were from legitimate sources that we made sure to include. If any points of our article were pointed out as closely infringing on the guidelines, they were quickly edited in order to make sure they followed all rules.
 * 5) We have consistently tried to interact and respond to our interviewers in a constructive way so that we could better our relations with the wiki community as well as improve our article as much as possible. I have contacted OAs on an individual basis as well as responded to many of our critiques so that I could better understand how others view our articles and to get more in-depth knowledge on how to fix it and make it better for others.

Overall, in the past two weeks and over the course of the class, my partner and I have added a considerable amount of information that has greatly improved the status of our article (which was recently moved up to a B rating!). We have constantly looked to improve the article from a grammatical and spelling standpoint and from the perspective of a reader by adding wikilinks and explaining many facets of the subject. We have talked to our reviewers and fixed all recommendations we agreed with and explained why other critiques we would now want to include. In the end, I’m incredibly happy with our article and I look forward to others being able to benefit from the information my partner and I have compiled.BigA726 (talk) 00:22, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Great summary, Adam! Glad to see our article got rated B. We have done much of the editing for the last couple of weeks. Both of us added more sources to the article. We followed the guideline and summarized all the relevant materials and organized it in a concise way for wide range of audience. We have communicated with reviewers and made many changes to our article according to comments. I think we did very well with the overall presentation of the topic. The structure is well established and all the sections are written in a neutral tone. We have improved the article further with couple new diagrams illustrating the general concept on the topic. I am glad we have a meaningful contribution to wikipedia and I hope the information we assembled will be beneficial for everyone.Luyao Kevin Xu (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)