Talk:CH391L/S14/Gibson Assembly


 * --Ella Watkins (talk) 18:53, 3 February 2014 (CST) I would really like to see some of the illustrations that you had to go along with your wiki. Your presentation was amazing and I really think that the illustrations helped me visualize the concept a lot better. Also in backgrounds: maybe elaborate a tiny bit on why they chose T5, the exonuclease that is unstable at higher temperatures. In your presentation you did a good job telling us it was chosen so that the temperature could be raised and the T5 would no longer function. In the wiki, it mentions that it is not thermostable, but doesn't really tell why.
 * --Dennis Mishler (talk) 12:23, 5 February 2014 (CST) I completely agree with Ella on the figures/illustrations. You can probably just adapt the figures from your presentation.  Visual representation will greatly increase the ability of other to read and understand your wiki page.
 * --drewtack (talk) 13:40, 6 February 2014 (CST)It is quite well explained. Might I suggest mentions how it has been useful in synthetic genome assembly.  You could use the mouse mitochondria paper, which you mentioned in your presentation, as well as the Mycoplasma mycoides paper to show examples where Gibson Assembly has been utilized in mainstream research.  Additionally, you only have one listed source, which is not a big deal, but you also don't have many links to other cites in your wiki, which i think would be helpful.  I'm all for those external links, wiki is like the thoughtweb of the internet.
 * --Jordan Monk (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2014 (CST) Thanks for the input and kind words, guys. Formatting and fleshing out the wiki that's up there now was an afterthought at the time I was turning it in because I was short for time and wanted to be sure that the presentation was ready first and foremost. Additionally, I wanted a decent manuscript of sorts for the text of the article at the very least. Obviously, the figures that I put together for the presentation should be on the wiki in some form, but adapting 30+ powerpoint slides to one or a handful of images would take some time and thought. Ideally, I would like to just format the slides into a .gif file or html5 movie that could loop somewhere on the page in an appropriate size and rate of play. I will also certainly add in something more about applications, sources and links.


 * --Chen-Hsun Tsai (talk) 16:51, 6 February 2014 (CST) The content is very informative and make the complicate process easy to understand. However, for someone who didn't go to the presentation, they might not be able to digest everything without difficulty. An obvious way to improve this is to put some figures to show the critical steps, such as back chewing and primer designing.


 * --Alejandro Gutierrez (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2014 (CST) I don't know how necessary this is, but since the recipe is there, some indication of what the different parts (such as the Taq DNA polymerase or T5 exonuclease) of the solution are or what they do in the reaction may be useful. The different enzymes and solutions are mentioned in the method section, but their purpose is not explicitly stated.  It may be helpful to readers who don't know as much about biological laboratory tools and techniques.


 * --Gabriel Suarez (talk) 2:20, 7 February 2014 (CST) Very clean and well written! Yup, like said already...some images would be great (I understand the struggle)...and I'll add, some more key links here and there would make it all more resourceful.

--Dennis Mishler (talk) 07:49, 10 February 2014 (CST) Jorge's Critique

Nuts and bolts: No figures: a big downside. A couple of sentences significantly lack clarity. Not enough citations to literature. I would cite at least examples of success of this technology as well as references to preceding methods.

Bigger picture: I think Jordan did a good job writing a clear and easy-to-read wiki en general. The language seemed relaxed and easy to digest. However, at some point I feel it was too informal. Sentences were of good length in general but with a lot of information. I suggest breaking some of them up to explain each concept at once. I would add a section just to talk about one or two preceding methods (e.g. PCR-based cloning, linker cloning, etc.). By doing this, the main focus of the story here will be emphasized since Gibson assembly provides big advantages over these other methods. Pointing them out more specifically would work best. Probably a comparison table? I would add a section with one or two examples of success. I think diagrams and schemes are a must in this topic. I thought the iGEM section was well explained as well as the background one. I would like to see the rest more expanded in terms of detailed explanations. I think this has to be tailored to a broader audience so a lot of the terms have to be defined/explained.

Overall Format and structure: Seemed well-structure and I liked the format, just needs a couple of additions. I liked that he started from explaining the shortcomings of previous technology but failed to emphasize it even more.

Introduction and background material: Expand section about previous methods, present 1 or 2 more in detail with their corresponding references. Probably a simple diagram or flow chart?

Methods and main body/concepts: Definitely spend more time explaining the method. Probably even have a subsection on primer design. Needs many more details in order to understand. The presentation was great, I think something like that would help. Needs to be tailored for a broader audience so a lot of the terms have to be explained.

Relation to iGEM and future directions: I thought this section is well written and seems complete in my opinion.

Figures, Figure legends, and citations: FIGURES IS BIG, BIG MISSING ASPECT HERE. The wiki requires at least one.