Talk:Healthy cloned monkeys born in Shanghai

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Notes[edit]

I'm going to let this sit for a few hours. I don't mind if anyone else works on it or even hits review. I invite comment on any topic that may require further explanation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a scientist, but does one "create a cloned monkey" or does one simply "clone a monkey"? --SVTCobra 20:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The second phrase places the emphasis on the donor. "Create a cloned monkey" places the emphasis on the clone. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Darkfrog24: I don't think many people would know what is a somatic cell (I really wonder if people know what "germ cell", "gram positive/negative bacteria" means) apart from those who studied biology in high school. Don't you think it needs to be explained but in such a way that it does not appear to biology students that it was dumbed down.
•–• 03:52, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Same for mito "the so-called power house of the cell" chondria.
•–• 03:54, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Are we supposed to italicise names of genes while writing[typing] it (just like binomial nomenclature)?
•–• 03:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Added context for "somatic." Context is already there for "mitochondria." Yes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
<cough> What? Emphasis on donor or clone? If we said, "Shanghai scientists cloned a monkey" that would mean they were the donor? Donor of what? DNA? I am so confused, Darkfrog24. But, OK, so how does "create cloned monkeys" put the emphasis on the little monkeys? Help me understand. --SVTCobra 04:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
<blundering into the conversation> To me, "create a cloned monkey" sounds strange. It suggests that the activity is creation, not cloning, which doesn't scan. Would it be useful to say "successfully clone a monkey"? The activity is cloning, and emphasis is placed on the success, rather than on the pre-existing monkey. --Pi zero (talk) 04:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We could go with "produce cloned monkeys." (There are two.) This is a subject-verb issue. In "clone a monkey," the monkey in the phrase is the donor. When we say "create cloned monkeys," the monkeys in the sentence are the clones. The article and its sources all say far more about Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua than about the unnamed fetuses that provided the nuclei. It's kind of how in "copy a paper," the paper in question is the original, not the copy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmmm. Well, maybe I get it a little bit. If the "natural" monkey is A and the clone is B. Then you are arguing that "Scientists clone a monkey" would give too much credit to monkey A? And because there's more than one makes this problem worse?
OK. Can we say "Monkey cloned by scientists in Shanghai" and insert 'twice' or 'thrice' as needed? "Created" and "produced" give too much 'god-like' status to the scientists, in my opinion. --SVTCobra 05:31, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So we want 1) to focus on the clones more than on the donors 2) to NOT pay too much attention to the scientists and 3) to mention where this happened if possible. How about "Healthy monkey clones born in Shanghai"? (I've got "Shanghai" in my "places so famous that most people know what country we mean" category.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:07, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Break: scientific and technical content[edit]

@Darkfrog24: how about "...an entire nucleus from a non-reproductive cell, known as somatic cell ..." I think that is what your original edit suggested; saying "non-reproductive somatic cell" would make a noob wonder if there are reproductive somatic cells too.

And what about "though it will have all of the ovum's cell organelles including mitochondria." -- by "cellular machinery", did you mean the cellular activities/organelle activities?
•–• 06:08, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Darkfrog24, Acagastya: I rewrote some of the explanation of the study to try to make it more layman-friendly and fit the pyramid structure a little more. I tried to add in some more explanatory text about the more jargony terms, and more wikilinks. There was a diagram of the process from Wikipedia that could be used: File:Cloning_diagram_english.svg. —mikemoral (talk) 09:25, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I made a couple of factual corrections but overall your changes are good. The thing we need to not trip over is that not all our DNA is in the nucleus. The mitochondria also have their own DNA (but it's only used in the mitochondria; it doesn't encode anything for your eyes or bones or blood chemistry like nuclear DNA does). I feel the best thing to do is to mention the mitochondria but not go into detail. That way, readers who already know about mitochondrial DNA will see the reference and readers who don't will not be either misled or confused or overwhelmed.
The other trick? The real term for "the DNA in the nucleus (as opposed to the DNA in the mitochondria)" is "somatic DNA"! That would probably confuse people, so I just called it "nuclear DNA" here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to find a way to describe the nucleus briefly in text, "DNA-containing" seemed to work, but I get it's confusing with those cellular powerhouses having their own DNA, so "nuclear DNA" works better. —mikemoral (talk) 19:35, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Review of revision 4378354 [Passed][edit]

Revision 4378354 of this article has been reviewed by Green Giant (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 15:26, 25 January 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Comments by reviewer: There is some overlap with wording used in the journal websites but this is inevitable because technical scientific terms are precise and it would be very difficult to write about the concepts in a different way without using these terms.

The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4378354 of this article has been reviewed by Green Giant (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 15:26, 25 January 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Comments by reviewer: There is some overlap with wording used in the journal websites but this is inevitable because technical scientific terms are precise and it would be very difficult to write about the concepts in a different way without using these terms.

The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Date of mouse cloning[edit]

@Darkfrog24, SVTCobra: The source says a male mouse in 1998. It doesn't say when the first mouse was cloned. If we got that wrong, we need to issue a {{correction}} (and no, we don't have to stick to the cited sources in establishing that we got something wrong; we do need to document it very well, though). --Pi zero (talk) 23:17, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A quick google yielded this CBS News story which says October 3, 1997 was when the first cloned mouse was born. Her name was Cumulina (RIP). --SVTCobra 23:24, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
An old press release from the University of Hawaii at Manoa seems to suggest it was first in 1998. Tracking down the relevant issue of Nature Genetics the researchers published a report which gives that same October 1997 date as the Cumulina's birth (named after cumulus cells apparently), though the paper itself wasn't published until June 1998. —mikemoral (talk) 23:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In regards to any correction, I'd suggest we could either note the year it was reported, or the year of actual birth. —mikemoral (talk) 23:43, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was trying to correct the second "1998" in reference to Dolly the sheep, a typo for "1996." I simply got the wrong one. The mouse was indeed 1998. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:04, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Darkfrog24: That seems to me treatable as a typo, since we'd already fixed the earlier mention of that date. We seem to have a question about the mouse, now, though. --Pi zero (talk) 02:14, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The press release that Mike found seems to pertain to the first male mouse cloning (1999, not 1998 btw). The first female mouse does seem to be October 1997. Is that close enough to leave as 1998, which is likely when it became public? --SVTCobra 02:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Skimmed the release. Dates are funny in science. You can perform a study and then not publish it until two years later. The press release is dated 1999, but the study may have happened in 1998. Let's take a closer look. The release doesn't say when anything happened, except like this: "When we produced mouse clones last year, people asked if it could be done with males." So the first clone, irrespective of gender, was the year prior to this person being interviewed, probably 1998.
As for the first female mouse clone, CBS says 1997 and University of Utah says 1998. Maybe check the date on the actual study and switch from "born" to "announced." Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:19, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Reminder: if we decide we've got it wrong, it requires a {{correction}}. --Pi zero (talk) 12:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Add a link for Mu-ming Poo[edit]

{{editprotected}}

I've created the English article for Dr. Mu-ming Poo. Please add a link from this article. -Zanhe (talk) 21:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Pi zero (talk) 21:55, 9 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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