NivinN

Thought Log

Biology 3595A Wikipedia Project

I have been browsing around and have narrowed down the article search to a few possible pages for the Wikipedia project. I think there needs to be a lot of organizational change with the Genetic Engineering, Genome Engineering, and Genome Editing pages. The first, and most general of these, "Genetic Engineering" is lacking in a lot of information. Its definition can be written in a much more clear manner and the sources that have been chosen are not entirely relevant; many of them focus on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), which are only one possible product of genetic engineering -- the other being Synthetic Organisms. There is also no need for a separate article on the history of genetic engineering. Many of the subheadings in that page, such as Regulation, Advancements, and Commercialization have more to do with genetic engineering itself rather than its history. Instead of a Process subheading, I think it would be much more relevant to include a Tools subheading, under which would have brief descriptions of key components such as restriction enzymes, selectable markers, plasmids, transposons, homologous recombination, gel electrophoresis, PCR, genetic libraries, sequencing technologies. After this, I would want to include subheadings of the most common processes, such as transformation (i.e. adding a gene directly to a cell), making transgenic organisms (i.e. adding a gene to an organism), making genetically engineered models (i.e. removal of a gene from an organism), as well as the creation of synthetic genomes. Further, the Applications section also has a lot of room for improvement. More can also be added beyond these categories. The other pages related to this network of topics, such as Genome Engineering, Genome Editing, Transgenesis, Synthetic Organisms, etc. can also be further improved.NivinN (talk) 19:16, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Should add engineered nucleases, CRISPR/Cas9 under Tools.NivinN (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Other possible pages include Synthetic genomics (too short), Genome editing (too technical).NivinN (talk) 19:33, 23 September 2015 (UTC)