Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg 2012/Section 81/Group 81E

Group 81E

This is the Wikipedia page for 410.602 Molecular Biology, 2012, group 81E. This group will be editing the Bacteriophage T12 article.

Use the talk page here to collaborate as a group, when learning to use and navigate Wikipedia, assessing articles, or for any other topic.

Use this page (not the talk page) for article assessments (optional, see Unit 5); rationale for selecting an article (Unit 6); progress reports (Units 9 and 12); and the final report (Unit 14). Please create a new section here for each of those assignments.

Unit 6: Article Selection Rationale

Our group has chosen to work on the Bacteriophage T12 article. The current Wikipedia article is considered a "stub" only a few sentences long, and contains very little, basic information about the phage.

Bacteriophages in general are very interesting and vital organisms to understand when studying microbiology and molecular biology. Phages are very unique and their mechanisms can cause much destruction with little effort. Bacteriophage T12, specifically, has a hand in Scarlet Fever, an infectious disease that affects small children.Bacteriophage T12 carries the speA gene which codes for erythrogenic toxin A. The T12 phage infects the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes and converts the nontoxigenic strain into a virulent strain. This toxin is a main player in the contraction of Scarlet Fever .The exact source of this speA gene of bacteriophage is unknown however, the presence of a signal peptide coding region in speA shows that this gene might be of bacterial origin . This is an interesting fact about the origin of this speA gene which we can look more for and include the information in the wiki page. We plan to talk about the lysogenic phase of this temperate bacteriophage which is maintained by a repressor which represses all other genes except the speA gene which results in continuous production of the toxin during the lysogenic phase. And then we will include some information about the lytic phase of the bacteriophage. For something that affects so many children, bacteriophage T12 is rather overlooked on its own Wikipedia page. In fact, there is more information about Bacteriophage T12 in the Scarlet Fever article.So we think that more information about bacteriophage T12 needs to be provided on its own page rather than under some other article.

In developing this article more we plan not only on giving more "credit" to the bacteriophage, but also on expanding the information available about phage T12. Sections in this article may include an introduction to Bacteriophage T12, outlining some of the information seen here as well as the mechanisms in which it works. In the mechanism section we plan on including information about where and how T12 integrates into the host genome and about it's lysogenic and lytic pathway. We may also expand on other organisms that Bacteriophage T12 may affect, and how this virus can be contracted and spread. Other important information may include testing and assays for the bacteriophage in addition to how to prevent and kill/ deactivate Bacteriophage T12. Also, if phage T12 has uses in research, industry and vaccinations, we plan on including such information as well.

Unit 9: Progress Report

In the days since we selected our article, a vast majority of our time has been spent in compiling information and finding ways to share any articles, papers or other sources of information we could each find. We have used a shared DropBox folder to share the pdf version of any articles we have found. This way, we are able to pool our resources, and see when we have found the same reference and also find new ones that another group member has found. Some of our highlighting and notes are also shared in this way, again allowing our group to work together and focus on information pertinent to the article, yet do so on our own time. So far, we have found 14 articles to share, and are reading through them to collect research. We have assigned ourselves certain specific topics to research within the umbrella topic of Bacteriophage T12, although these are open to adaptation as our information is compiled. It seems that there is limited available information about phage T12 specifically, with most papers briefly mentioning the phage as part of a discussion about the speA gene. However, even though it has been a bit more time-consuming to find articles with enough relevant information, there is a positive side to that as all our information is important and relevant. We are trying to gather as much information as we can about bacteriophage T12 and have been trying to find out if Bacteriophage T12 is involved in any diseases other than scarlet fever, and if it has a lysogenically virulent effect on any other bacteria in addition to "Streptococcus pyogenes". So far, though, we have not found any evidence for this. It could be that this bacteriophage is only responsible for erythrogenic toxin production by S. pyogenes only. We have included some information about the genome of the phage and the location of the speA gene in the article, even though we could not find a whole lot. Again, we do plan to search more. We are also editing each others' work as information is added to the article to make sure there is uniformity to the references - trying to have PMIDs available for all articles possible, making sure we don't have double mentions of the same reference. In addition, we have spent much time on our group talk page deciding on the way forward.

The article itself has been updated to include some more basic information, and some information on rendering T12 inoperative.So far we plan to include the following sections in this article:

1. Introduction
2. Mechanism/Life cycle
3. Genome
4. Involvement in the Disease Scarlet fever
5. Testing and assays
6. Control of T12

We have not had significant interactions with other editors. One editor made a minor change after the first bit of information was added. In what we have to do further, we feel that some more references are still needed, and we are working on obtaining those as we begin to add to the article. We plan to continue keeping the article updated as we gather and organize our information. We are updating the article slowly as we do not want to add incomplete information. For example, for the mechanism/life cycle section, the contributor will first draft a major chunk of the section of the article that she is responsible for, and then add it to the article page.

Unit 12: Progress Report

Rasha - reworked the introduction, added General characteristics section; Started the discussion with Group 81C about Peer-reviewing. Offered my suggestions on the article. They seem to have had some changes made by other editors but aside from one editor thanking me for posting the notice that major changes were coming, I have heard nothing on our article from anyone else

Shivani - Discussed the peer-review suggestions and fixed the reference locations in our article from peer-review suggestions

Rachael- Added the "Detection Assays" section to the page. I also attempted to add a picture of a southern blot from the article, but I am having trouble with it. I am going to reach out to an editor and see what I am doing wrong. I also started and will continue to add links from keywords in the article to their wiki articles. I have read Group 81C's article and gave them a few suggestions.

• Just getting started, guys.
• Reminder, in case we need to include/edit/add something:

• Suggestions for inclusion in this progress report are:

Any progress made so far on improving the article

Any significant interactions you've had with other Wikipedia editors. Were they helpful? Did any edits you made get reverted?

To-do list for improvements that you plan to make in the remaining weeks

Any other problems or concerns

• In addition to the topics covered last time, also summarize any major suggestions each individual made to the other group as peer-reviewers, and any significant interactions you had with that group.

I fixed the location of the references in our article and a small mistake in one of the references as pointed out by one of our peer-reviewers. Just wanted to add to the progress report but will change the 'I' in the final report.

Thanks, Shivani, I saw that :) %%%%%% Also guys - just saying, I'm going to keep adding chunks to the top section so I remember when I finalize the draft :D