Talk:CH391L/S14/Biocontainment


 * Jeffrey Barrick (talk) 14:32, 24 February 2014 (CST): Example of frequencies of escape mutants from various strategies / combinations of strategies?
 * Jeffrey Barrick (talk) 14:32, 24 February 2014 (CST): Example of (micro)organism escaping from lab?
 * --Ella Watkins (talk) 21:33, 27 February 2014 (CST) I thought the toxin/antitoxin pair idea was fascinating, could you supply some real world applications when this was used?
 * --Gabriel Suarez (talk) 23:15, 27 February 2014 (CST) I think it would be great if this report included a brief list of imagined or real threats from accidental release of recombinant DNA into the environment.  What has been speculated to be the worst case scenario?
 * Jorge 08:37, 28 February 2014 (CST) This is very good article, I like the structure and particularly having this first paragraph of introduction to what you will focus in the wiki article. I would have liked to see more about why the Asilomar Conference deemed that recombinant DNA experiments in general pose little to no risk in the case of scape. Also, some examples of scape and probably intentional release? Ethical perspective probably?
 * --drewtack (talk) 10:09, 28 February 2014 (CST)I think overall this is really good. I think if you were to do anything, maybe you could bring in the fluorescent arabidopsis that was on kickstarter a couple months ago.  I really like your semantic firewall portion, as it is awesome and crazy and I think it totally embodies synthetic biology.


 * --Dennis Mishler (talk) 09:57, 28 February 2014 (CST) Liz, nice page. I agree with Jordan about the figure sizes.

--Dennis Mishler (talk) 09:49, 28 February 2014 (CST) Jordan's Critique

Overall Format and structure: Overall it’s very good. I didn’t find anything to be confusing or erroneous. The main things that could be improved are concepts that feel incomplete due to a lack of examples or referencing examples elsewhere.

Introduction and background material: The opening sentence definition is too wordy, and should really just be simplified to something like limiting unintended exposure of synthetic DNA systems. I’m glad you referenced the Asilomar conference, and maybe you could add the detail Jeff brought up in class. Going from the introduction of recombinant DNA to the SV40 research that worried people to Asilomar would flow nicely. This may just be personal preference, but I feel like the line about whole genome synthesis and the state of synthetic biology is unnecessary. Short histories of a few sentences should start in the past and move forward in time linearly to the present.

Methods and main body/concepts: I really like how the various biocontainment systems are broken down and organized. The only way I think the organization could be improved is by moving the alternative nucleotide figure so that all of the bullet points align. I don’t think every single thing needs a well-described example, but I think for at least a two or three of the systems, describing the idea generally and then describing an actual implementation from the literature would be the best thing for this section. At the very least, remove the line about “Kruger and coworkers report progress” and actually say, in short summary, what their progress is. I would also change the repeated references to LastName and coworkers to et al. notation. I think there’s a typo extra “a” before Torres, and on that note, being that you’re specifically referencing the content of the Torres paper and not the review, I would cite the actual Torres paper instead of the review.

Relation to iGEM and future directions: You’re going to have to flesh out the iGEM section with descriptions of the projects in your own article. The line telling the reader to go to igem.org needs to go. Sorry!

Figures, Figure legends, and citations: The figures are all way too small on the page. They can be resized as the ___px attribute of the tag. The overview of systems figure should be very prominent and large due to its assistance in visualizing the systems and how detailed the figure is for readability. The alternate nucleotides don’t need to be much bigger, but maybe 25% larger would be nice. The ncAA figure 3 should be somewhere in between, so that some detail can be gleaned. The legends are all fine and the citations are great with inline citations and descriptions and everything, but in reference 7’s description, the “E.Coli” should be formatted italicized with a lowercase c and a space between, as in E. coli. Also, you mention research by “a Torres” and I’m wondering if that’s a typo or