User:Kelleytw/Choose an Article

Article Selection

Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 [IGF-1 ] Insulin-like growth factor 1
IGF-1 plays an important role in childhood growth and stimulates anabolic effects in adults. I am considering selecting this article because I find IGF-1 interesting as there has been published studies stating the importance this hormone could have on reversing our biological age. The article goes into quite the depth on IGF-1's mechanism of action, synthesis in the human body, as well as going over clinical trials in pursuit of establishing this drug as a helpful candidate for diseases that effect the anterior pituitary in the brain for example. The article stands neutral as it wasn't written to oppose the use of IGF-1 in clinical trials, and the claims the publisher makes backing up certain well known facts are cited well. IGF-1 isnt my first article of choice that i would choose to edit as there is already a lot of information on the subject that I couldn't necessarily add to. Though, something I would add would be IGF-1's role in reversing our biological age and the epigenetic changes this could have in our genome.

Interferon-Type 2 [IFN-y] Interferon type II
One of my main choices, IFN-y: I chose to evaluate and perhaps even edit this article as there isnt much information on the published page. IFN-y is a protein related to the interferon family, and it's one of the innate immune system's anti-viral activators. 4 out of the 5 articles i'm choosing to essentially edit are immunology based proteins that induce an array of affects that help the immune system fight off infections. IFN-y is one of the 4 articles I chose because as opposed to IFN-1, IFN-y has little information on it's page describing it's overall contribution to the immune system-- it gets shadowed behind IFN-1 which elicits more activity, but nonetheless IFN-y is still important. The article does a good job on going into detail on the function of certain cells these proteins get released/inhibited by. Further more, I think I would be able to add more information on IFN-y's role in a more clinical output and even describe the activity this cytokine plays in relation with the rest of the immune system. This article is written well and has good published sources; this article is seemingly missing information or is a little short, which would be a good article to edit.

Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription Protein [STAT] STAT protein
STAT proteins are important in the human body, as the name states, they activate intracellular transcription factors that signal to other proteins to stimulate cell growth and differentiation. There was a really well published article on Wikipedia titled "STAT-JAK Signaling Pathway" but i decided to chose this one because of the less information this article has published. I thought it was interesting to always see JAK proteins labeled with STAT's, so when I found this article they didnt go as in-depth with the importance of not being labeled and associated with JAK. This is a short article, so it would be a good choice to relay more [missing] information to the public on the importance of STAT's. This article does a good job on describing the activation of the STAT pathway and how these proteins can get down-regulated and induce tumors or help the immune system by suppressing tumors. What this article doesnt do well is list enough sources (only one cited) so I could contribute massively and add more missing information as I find applicable.

Lymphotoxin beta [LT-b/TNF-C] Lymphotoxin beta
LT-beta is apart of the massive family of Tumor Necrosis Factor protein's whom collectively function on the cell surface of lymphocytes to induce an immune response to fight off foreign invaders. One thing that I noticed right away is that this article doesnt describe what type of lymphocytes that LT-b attach to. This article is very brief though it does include the function, though limited, of what this subtype of the TNF protein family does. I could contribute and add more relevant information on the proteins structure, it's interactions with other cells of the immune system, and even its interaction with the TNF family while also providing information on it's signaling cascade pathway of how it itself gets activated. For how short the article is, I was surprised to see how many references were added at the end of the article. That makes me think that the publisher didnt put too much thought or relevant information in the actual article, and merely used the references as a gateway for others to dig deeper into the protein.

Interleukin 1 beta [IL-1b] Interleukin 1 beta
The last article I decided to evaluate was IL-1b. Interleukin-1 beta is a cytokine involved in cell signaling. IL-1b is insoluble so it functions are on the extracellular surface of lymphocytes, so the functions are limited to what it can do. In relation to other important Interleukins of our immune system, IL-1b gets activated by immune cells of our innate immunity (macrophages) and therefore can perform or help in phagolytic activity. From this article, I thought it was a neat insight to find out that "The induction of cyclooxygenase-2 (PTGS2/COX2) by this cytokine in the central nervous system (CNS) is found to contribute to inflammatory pain hypersensitivity". So not only does IL-1b have important functions in the immune system, but also the CNS. This article is very short and brief so I feel like I can contribute to provide a plethora of not only relevant, but important information on the actual signal transduction taking place extracellularly and as well as the activation and it's cascade affects.
http://atlasgeneticsoncology.org/Genes/GC_IL1B.html
https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=IL1B