Talk:Palaeoimmunology

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Superscience71421.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:03, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello! I am a student editor!!

Hello, I am an undergraduate university student who will be expanding this stub! I look forward to working on this page! Superscience71421 (talk) 22:34, 25 November 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Superscience71421 (talk • contribs) 22:31, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Plan of Action

Things to do:

• connect all spellings of the title to this page
• further flesh out and develop the intro
• add to the list of palo-immunological examples
• find a photo for the page

Superscience71421 (talk) 21:11, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Review of current article status

Hello, I am also a student (of the same class as Superscience####) sent here by the powers that be to investigate this article.

The article introduces the concept of palaeimmunology as the study of antigens (and presumably antibodies too, if possible) in ancient preserved tissues/cells. This makes this topic very multidisciplinary, and clearly this is implied even in the title. It seems a very challenging field, given the limitations of preserved tissue, and from the article, it seems instances of it in peer reviewed literature are limited as well. This would be implied if the article was assumed comprehensive, but since any viewer would not know the current status of the field, perhaps it is worth mentioning how popular (or not) the field is to put in perspective the relatively short list of "examples."

Typos were minimal, and I took the liberty of fixing a few myself (I hope I wasnt being presumptuous!).

Clarity and tone is quite appropriate for wikipedia. However, I do have an understanding of immunology since I'm a chemistry major familiar with biochemistry, so admitting my bias, perhaps the definition of immunology and palaeo could be explained more formally in order to create an etymological basis for the combined term "palaeoimmunology."

also, I searched "paleoimmunology" when I was looking for the article, which seems more intuitive for spelling (apparently, for me at least), and the link did not redirect me to this article. I saw in your sandbox (Superscience) that you wanted to do some rerouting with links for all the spellings and mispellings, and indeed this seems to be a result of the immaturity of the field as of yet.

The images tell a good story of the field. The mummification, and the famous ELISA assay, are both "palae" and "immunology" in image form, so the vibe of the page is definitely well crafted from that at least. The listing of examples is clear and I like this format for the early days of this field. To simply see the instances of paleoimmunology without attempting to order them as of yet allows the reader to see trends unbiased by an author. This is especially important while a field is young, to curb misconceptions. I wonder if there is another filed called archaeoimmunology that doesnt know about palaeoimmunology, but perhaps they are similar.

Anyway, the article also has a pleasingly disproportional number of references for the amount of information.

This article seems well crafted to be expanded upon by future instances of palaeoimmunology, which I believe is the most important aspect of a wikipedia article.

Finally, perhaps the article could leave us with more of an understand of "why," why study old antigens besides learning the effects of mummification or preservation on antigens? What's the application? Why should I care and be interested in this field? Why is it important? Of course the author is intended to limit their opinions, but the relevance is valuable and non-obvious.

Good work Superscience! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco0126 (talk • contribs) 18:27, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello Marco0126, thank you for the constructive review! After reading what you posted, I went back through the article and tried to address issues you mentioned. Relating to the “popularity” of the field and its continued development as a topic, I added a sentence under the “examples” section to clarify that the field is growing and still being properly defined. I liked your idea of adding an etymologic definition of the topic to the article so I broke down the term and defined its parts. Addressing why paleo-immunology is important, I added a few more lines to my header paragraph to discuss how immunoassays are applied to understand the biochemical makeup and composition of samples. The information gleamed through these assays and procedures can convey information regarding the “life” and “death” of the sample being studied. I think this addresses importance without the casting of a biased opinion. I personally think this topic is fascinating! As for linking all spellings of the topic to this article, I’ve yet to work that out. That will be a goal for the future! The topic is currently spelled using UK conventions and I think ultimately the page title will need to be changed. Thank you again for your review!

Superscience71421 (talk) 05:11, 7 December 2016 (UTC)