Talk:Apoptosis

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To-do list for Apoptosis: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Apoptosis DNA Fragmentation page needs more information, please do not move it to the Apoptosis page. Apoptosis DNA Fragmentation needs its own page as it is a very important feature of apoptosis. There is another page called DNA Fragmentation which confuses people with Apoptosis DNA Fragmentation. They are different.
  • Make outline of apoptotic pathways clearer
  • Convert bullet points to prose when necessary
  • Images of pathways
  • FAC-worthy article - organise it!
  • Integrate references into text using <ref></ref> tags

Contents

[edit] First sentence

"Deliberate life relinquishment" is an awkward wording.

I thought it was quite elegant actually... but any suggestions are always welcomed. "Cell suicide" has too many connotations to be used. -- Serephine ♠ talk - 00:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I also thought it was a little awkward. How about "Apoptosis is the main type of programmed cell death in a multicellular organism, and involves an orchestrated series of biochemical events leading to a characteristic cell morphology and death." 128.111.209.143 19:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Mike

[edit] About the apoptosis signalling pathway

The VDAC interacts with Bak to inhibit its own mitochondrial outermembrane permeablisation (MOMP) activity? I thought Bak or Bax can interact with VDAC to directly induce permeablisation (when they multimerise), and it's the binding of these pro-apoptotic proteins to the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2/Bcl-Xl that inhibits MOMP?

Can someone clarify?

[edit] Statistics on cells developing into cancerous cells

I know I read somewhere that (statistically) each day, every human has two cells developing into cancer cells, but are stopped by the immune system via apoptosis. If someone can back this up, it should be included in the article. --Magnus Manske

The statistics mentioned by Magnus are quite relevant: I will add mention to this as soon as I find corroboration in a trusted publication. Of course, if someone corroborates this before I do, please add it. -- jaimeglz

[edit] Philosophical implications

What the article doesn't seem to discuss much is the philosophical implication of having a cell programmed to kill itself on purpose. Which is all fine and well, since its mostly a scientific article, but I have read many many articles in magazines that discuss apoptosis and cite it as the fact that being a kamikaze or a suicide bomber, or suicide itself isn't as "unnatural" as everyone makes it out to be, whether this is true/NPOV or not. But would there be a place for this in the article?

And on a different note, I think this article can make it for WP:FAC if there were some neat diagrams and images - I have already emailed a webmaster for permission to use one (which happens to be 300 KB large), but of course to be an FA you have to have more images. -- Natalinasmpf 06:33, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Response: Sorry for taking so long to answer. There is no doubt on the importance of the implications of this topic for the philosophy of science. As Lowe et al. mention in their 18 Nov. 2004 Nature article, "Intrinsic tumour suppression": "Cell proliferation and cell death are such diametrically opposed cellular fates that the discovery that the two are linked and interdependent processes was a great surprise." However, the only way I foresee to legitimately introduce wider philosophical questions into a Wikipedia article like "apoptosis" would be to quote or paraphrase highly recognized authors' opinions. And there is an additional difficulty involved, because it has already been suggested that the article is too long (see discussion above). Suggestions are welcome, but probably the best solution will be to place material on the wider implications (when found) into articles dealing with the philosophy of science.
jaimeglz, 5 Mar. 2006.

[edit] Intercellular signals for apoptosis

This article doesn't appear to elaborate on this too much, especially, how do immune cells recognise cells that have been infected by viruses? Do their cell membranes change, or something? Do they withdraw signals? And of other things, for example, a lack of a cell stimuli as much as presence of stimuli can also cause apoptosis (I have read) - ie. if there's a cell without an "anchor" tying it to other cells at a cer Would the article explain more on this programming? Can more be elaborated on this? If we don't know (we probably don't know a lot), can the article clarify? -- Natalinasmpf 19:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Response: There is abundant reference material on cell signalling at the end of the article. Follow the links and take a look: many of the papers are quite readable for the non-specialist. Would you really like to dig into the subject? Alberts et al. monumental Molecular Biology of the Cell (with its step-by-step explanation) can be read for free on the web. jaimeglz 5 Mar. 2006

[edit] Apoptosis Pronunciation

The article only mentions one pronunciation, and the reference link provided says that it's controversial. I've heard the word said by professionals in any of 4 different ways, and don't like the idea that the article only mentions one. While I pronounce it with a silent second-p, I don't accept that as standard because I also don't pronounce "helicopter" as "helicotter," nor do I use Greek and Latin plurals when an English one is acceptable. To me, the pronunciation as indicated is derived from pretentiousness rather than accuracy, because if accuracy was the issue, ptosis wouldn't be the most accurate Greek suffix.--Trypsin 15:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I have always pronounced it as A-POP-TOW-SIS, I have only ever heard this pronounciation. I would like to see some mention in the article that the pronounciation is disputed (just like the linked to article). Adenosine | Talk 17:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I do the same, mainly because I read the word before I heard it and the phonetic pronunciation stuck. -- Serephine ♠ talk - 03:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I got yelled at by an old boss for doing that... so it's been ingrained in me to silence the 'p' (as in "pterosaur"). – ClockworkSoul 18:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Well from one of my lectures with Professor Wyllie, he himself said that the correct pronunciation is with A-POP-TOW-SIS (pronouncing the "p"). He explained that, in Greek, when the "pt" is in the middle of the word, the "p" should be pronounced. 128.232.249.94 14:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Having lived in Greece, and speaking fluent Demotic Greek, I can say that the Greeks do pronounce both the 'p' and the 't'.

but it is commonly pronounced exactly as written despite the fact that in Greek it would be pronounced with a silent second p: The linked reference did not say which pronunciation was more common and in fact leaned on the silent-p side. So I changed this to with opinion divided between a pronunciation with a silent p (a-PO-tosis), and the p spelt out (a-POP-tosis). - TwoOars 19:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It is clearly spelled out phonetically in Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary as being pronounced as both ă-pŏp-tŏ’sĭs and apo tō' sis. I find it to be regional on which pronunciation is used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.90.57.194 (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

What about "apo-PTO-sis"? This would be etymologically the most "correct;" that is, most in line with classical Greek as it is pronounced by modern English-speaking Classicists. I'm not sure that's totally relevant- perhaps the pronunciation of modern English-speaking bilogists is more important; but if there are going to be claims of historical correctness, this is the one that should take it. Just a suggestion. Helikophis (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There has never been a "silent p" in Greek; the p is always articulated regardless of its position in the word. It is only silent in English, and only word-initially. I have tweaked the text to reflect that. ·ΚΕΚΡΩΨ· (talk) 12:32, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Role of NO

Hi, I am a little puzzled that the role of nitric oxide in regulating apoptosis has not been given due importance in this article. I would be enlightened if someone could include the significance of NO given that this topic of research is being pursued greatly in scientific circles. Thanks. Sriram sh 07:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou for pointing this out, I've included a small reference to this in the text. -- Serephine ♠ talk - 03:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks Serephine for that little bit of information. I really appreciate that very much especially since I have been scouring all over the place for relevant and useful info. Sriram sh 08:59, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Much was lost in the rewriting of the article

Citation and recognition of articles by women and young researchers is gone.

Citations and recognition of articles by both a variety of US, European and other nationality researchers is gone.

The history of how apoptosis was researched, discovered and brought to the forefront of international science by both collaboration and competition by many different has been removed from the article and placed somewhere else, despite that it was explicitly asked in this discussion section not to do so.

I perfectly understand that any article can be subjected to changes by any contributor, and that the order or the wording could have benefited a lot from good editing. However, great care had been taken to make the article acurate and founded on the best scientific literature available.

Sorry for the tone of the note I left yesterday. I take it back, and recognize it was totally inapproprite. Although it is not a justification, I did get irked at the fact that I had explicitly requested the article not to be broken into several pieces, and I still don't understand why there has been so much insistence.

jaimeglz

OK, well I'm assuming that this is directed at me as I rewrote this article a few weeks ago. I'd like to address a couple of issues you raised here:
  1. I'm Australian and have no interest in promoting a US-centric point of view. If anything, the Americanisation of Wikipedia irks me. I maintain the British English spelling of the Golgi apparatus article in silent protest against this fact, so please don't accuse me of something so unfounded. I moved all citations, at great trouble (every one was checked against the sentence I included it in), to the in-line style of referencing, as you noticed. I even added a few new ones. I removed any reference not contributing to the article after I edited it, these were references dealing with extremely complicated topics which, in all honesty, would interest no-one but an expert in the field. Said expert doesn't need the help of an online encyclopaedia to find these articles, hence my justification in removing all of 3 articles.
  2. The history of apoptosis has been removed to its own page, and linked from the main article. This, I believe, was a good move on my behalf to centre the article more on the process and function of apoptosis, which the majority of the visitors would want from the page. Should you wish to include an outline of the major points along with the link, please feel free, indeed this would only improve the article.
Your passive-aggressive tone in denouncing my changes comes as somewhat of a disappointment considering that part of your spiel was directed at how I've degraded the article, somewhat ironic since you have broken a Wikipedian tenet and haven't assumed good faith. I think that the elucidation of the article, the inclusion of diagrams, cleaned up references, improved readability and the promotion of the article from a "B" to an "A" class article would actually contradict your entire basis for your attack. I would hope that you would consider simply listing your grievances in the future rather than launching into a sarcastic attack on both my personal inclinations and the tenets of Wikipedia. Quite frankly, I'm offended and insulted. -- Serephine ♠ talk - 00:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Justification

Your note had all the hallmarks of being written more with passion than calculated thoughtfulness, so it's ok :) It's natural to feel very protective of something you've worked very hard upon - as I saw with the level of references included in the article. I was very impressed with this, and this was in part the reason I initiated my large clean-up. Plus you re-worded the tone of your note and effectively apologised, for that I can easily forgive you - although I hope you mean that it was inappropriate because it was unprofessional rather than because I am not American ;) To address your points and hopefully reach a conclusion:

  1. When removing references, I did not remove them on the basis of whether they were by PhD students or women. I removed them because they no longer had any relevance to the text. There is no need to "fill-up" references to make sure all demographics are equally represented, therefore your point, to me, makes no sense. I myself am female and not a researcher, therefore I can't be accused of bias.
  2. On the topic of removing references, my justification for removing them stemmed from the fact that referencing was not in-line: i.e. not linked from the end of the sentence/paragraph it supports. Therefore, when placing the references I had to check each (both the abstract and full text thanks to a university proxy) to see what exactly they supported. Hence when cleaning up the article from reading like a journal review to reading like an encyclopaedia ("Thibert et al. showed that..." -> "It has been shown that<ref=Thibert>") there were inevitably references which had to be removed, as they had no relevance in the text.
  3. On the topic of cleaning up: when I first came to this article I recoiled in horror at the unfriendly and unreadable layout; big, unbroken paragraphs, a review-like format, needlessly detailed explanations, sections referring back to previous sections, a big clunky list of references at the end (though I noticed the effort on the discussion page to neaten these up, most impressive). I re-did the headings and systematically rewrote the article to be readable by at least a university student (which I am). The problem at hand was prose: there was no flow in idea progression or sentence - hence when reading a paragraph you would need to recheck it a couple of times to understand what was being said, and even then you might come across the dastardly "See also above ...". There were sections also that made no sense as context was not provided.
  4. I tried not to eliminate detail where possible, and rewrote much of it to be relevant to the article. I apologise for removing it, I know the feeling of having a large chunk of work removed, but I was being brutal to mould the page into a useful one for anyone who came across it. I shouldn't have to say that Wikipedia isn't a scientific encyclopaedia - it's open to anyone and therefore the information should be written for anyone interested in that topic. Detail like what I removed would be better used in an article more specific for the processes, where the hardcore enthusiasts and scientifically literate would be more inclined to go for that calibre of information.
  5. Finally, the history move. Another aplology on my behalf - I didn't not see the discussion on this page. I was being a bold editor, though I think it was for the better. I do not think the article in it's entirety should be moved back to this page - it is big enough as a separate entity to exist on its own. However, as I mentioned above, a short summary of the main points would flesh out the heading in the main article and encourage people to visit the history article.

Should you have any concerns over my justifications and still do not agree with the direction the article has taken, please let me know and we can get a couple of people from Wikiproject MCB to arbitrate and input into any issues. I realise that you've said "much was lost in the rewriting of this article", but look at how much has been gained: readability, context, diagrams, easy references, appropriate headings, and of course it scraped up an "A" and paved the way for further contribution. Thanks for your understanding -- Serephine ♠ talk - 02:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mispronounciation

Letters that appear in words derived from Latin roots that are not pronounced (such as the p in pneumonia or pteradactyl are in fact pronounced when the letter from the same root appears within the middle of a word, as in the case of the second p in the word apoptosis (the second Latin root being ptosis, in which the p is not pronounced when it begins the word) or the c in the word gastrocnemius. Thus there is no legitimate pronunciation of this word without the second letter p. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 13:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You mean Greek and pterodactyl. ·ΚΕΚΡΩΨ· (talk) 11:58, 16 May 2008 (UTC)