Talk:Biology/GA1

GA Review[edit]

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I applaud you for taking on such an important article -- I am well aware how difficult it is to write good articles on very-high-level topics. I will presently go through the article in detail, but there are two things I would like to bring up immediately:

I don't believe the "five basic theories" are an intrinsic part of biology; they are one textbook's way of organizing the material. The concept is valid, I think, but the article should make clear that this is an organizational device and not a universal truth.
There is a glaring lack of a history section. I think it is necessary to at least briefly touch on the major developments, such as Aristotle, the microscope, Linnaeus, Darwin, and the discovery of DNA.

By the way, I am a behavioral neurobiologist, just for the sake of letting you know where my personal expertise lies.

Reviewer: Looie496 (talk) 22:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looie is right, this leaves out history completely. Luckily for you, History of biology is a featured article! It may take a while, but work on your WP:Summary style to add a nice section about this. Work on adapting that lead and a few summarizing sentences for each section to have two or three subsections in this main article. Be sure to not just copy it. Improving such a broad topic as this is hard, but I'm sure you can do it! Cheers, Reywas92 ^Talk 02:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Starting runthrough of article[edit]

The bottom paragraph of the lead doesn't seem suitable. It might be appropriate to say something about the problem of classification here, but it should be pitched at a higher level, and these details should be left for the body.
There should be a short section in the body of the article, probably right at the top, about what biology is. It's the study of life, of course, but what is "life"? You don't want to get bogged down on this but I think it needs to be considered at least briefly.
Cell theory: this should be converted to prose rather than a list.

More to come. Looie496 (talk) 04:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Going to fail article soon if no responses appear[edit]

I am shortly going to fail this article on technical grounds. The nominator is a new editor who does not seem to have been aware of the obligation for somebody to be willing to respond to concerns raised about GAN articles, and has not responded to queries. Unless somebody signifies willingness to work on the article, I am going to fail it in a couple of days -- with no prejudice against renomination. Looie496 (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry for the late response, as I've mentioned on my talk page. I'll try to start working on the article immediately.

Okay, I've added a first summary of the history of biology. As for the explanation about what biology is, can you elaborate upon the reasons that the lead doesn't satisfy those reasons? It would definitely help if I n=knew what we're up against over here. (☲Fireyair☲ (talk) 02:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Resuming review[edit]

Okay, the new History section basically looks pretty good. It ought to be taken from 1953 down to the present, though -- two or three sentences about the huge progress in molecular biology and molecular genetics, especially genome sequencing, ought to do the trick. Looie496 (talk) 19:37, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evolution: The paragraph beginning "Up into the 19th century..." seems out of place -- it breaks the logical flow of the section. I think it probably belongs somewhere, but I'm not sure where. It also probably would benefit from an introductory sentence. Looie496 (talk) 19:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, this is removed. --Ettrig (talk) 21:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Evolution: The last paragraph strikes me as bogus. What does dysgenics have to do with an increase in complexity? There are numerous known, or at least speculative, examples of decrease in complexity, but they don't have anything to do with the accumulation of defective genes. Looie496 (talk) 19:52, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Genetics: The first paragraph contains the sentence "Additionally, DNA codes for the same proteins regardless of what organism it is present in.". This is not quite correct -- see Genetic code#Variations to the standard genetic code, not to mention the possibilities of alternative splicing and frameshifts. Looie496 (talk) 19:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I changed this. This might also have been interpreted to say that the protein that it codes for is the same. But we agree that there are myriad differences between the proteins of different species, especially if they are not closely related. --Ettrig (talk) 21:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Genetics: Concerning "The set of chromosomes in a cell is collectively known as its genome.". Mitochondrial DNA is part of the genome, but not considered to be a chromosome, is it? Looie496 (talk) 20:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is, although it mostly gets mentined when discussing organsisms with several chromosomes per mitochondrion. Narayanese (talk) 21:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Homeostasis: The second paragraph strikes me as badly wrong. Negative feedback is indeed crucial to homeostasis, but positive feedback actually drives a system away from equilibrium. Furthermore, the purported examples of positive feedback don't look to me like examples of feedback at all. Looie496 (talk) 20:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed this to include only negative feedback. --Ettrig (talk) 14:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More to come.

Edited all. I just point out in the case of positive feedback that part of blood clotting is indeed positive feedback. However, I did clarify which aspect of said function was the example of positive feedback. As for childbirth contractions, that's a textbook example of positive feedback. Most discussions on biological feedback will use this example to help define positive feedback. ☲Fireyair☲ (talk) 00:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing[edit]

Somebody mentioned on a talk page somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that the term "biology" is not actually "from Greek", as the first line states, but rather the Greek is back-translated from the word "biology". It's sort of important to get this right; could you look into it? Looie496 (talk) 17:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have changed this. --Ettrig (talk) 14:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to note a correction I made to the "history" section—it mentioned the discovery that "all of the DNA is made up of codons". That's far from true: codons are only found in the protein coding regions of the DNA (exons), which make up less than 1% of the molecule. (This doesn't need any action.) Looie496 (talk) 17:21, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the Evolution section, the paragraph starting "Historically..." breaks the flow, and doesn't seem to contain any information that this article really needs. I suggest getting rid of it. Looie496 (talk) 17:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed this. (... but saved it in a way in Talk:History of Evolutionary Thought. --Ettrig (talk) 14:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Research: Anatomy is structural; it should not be listed in the Physiological category. Looie496 (talk) 17:56, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, moved to structural. --Ettrig (talk) 14:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Structural: You should probably add yeast to the list of model organisms. Looie496 (talk) 18:08, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with this comment. The list is given for developmental biology. Yeasts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae are unicellular and thus have very little development. See also the list in developmental biology. It does not include a yeast but does include a slime mold. --Ettrig (talk) 21:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not fully convinced (yeast is a model system for studying transcription factors) but I won't press this point. Looie496 (talk) 17:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Taxonomy: I feel that this paragraph could be worded in a way that is easier to understand: "This classification technique has evolved to reflect advances in cladistics and genetics, shifting the focus from physical similarities and shared characteristics to phylogenetics.". The point that needs to get across is that in olden days classification was based on macroanatomical structure, because that was the only information available. Nowadays it is more and more based on evolutionary descent, as revealed by genomics. The paragraph as written says that, but many readers won't be able to decipher it because of all the long words. Looie496 (talk) 18:16, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I changed to systematics and simplified considerably. We can add some back in if you like. --Ettrig (talk) 21:17, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be good somewhere to explain that Medicine is intimately tied to Biology, although it is ordinarily thought of as a separate discipline. Looie496 (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2009 (UTC)'[reply]

I am very unsure about what to do about this. My personal view is that the scope of medicine is a very small subset of the scope of biology and that therefore it is not worth mentioning. Agree though that the enormous interest of humankind in the problems of the human body has blown this subset up into enormous proportions. There is some mentioning of relation to medicine in the physiological paragraph. --Ettrig (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapup: I've gone through the whole article now, and if the final issues I've identified here can be resolved, I will be ready to promote the article. Looie496 (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you have done very valuable work here, I think. I have acted on all your comments, but don't expect you to be quite satisfied yet. If you would care to provide a new set of comments, I think we will be able to converge. --Ettrig (talk) 21:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pass[edit]

I'm satisified enough to pass the article at this point. That does't mean it is perfect, of course -- an article like this can never be perfect -- but I feel that it is a good resource for readers now. Thanks for the efforts to all who participated. Looie496 (talk) 17:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]