Talk:Alpha-actinin-3

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Abraham Thompson, Dalduend, TreVon Thomas, Dylanjjenkins, Marygergis 101010. Peer reviewers: Marygergis 101010.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:22, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing note to students

Content about human phenotype needs to be sourced per WP:MEDRS -- all content ~should~ be sourced to high quality recent reviews per WP:SCIRS. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 05:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

How to properly edit an article?

Dear Jytdog, would you be able to give me some pointers on what I did wrong in my sections "Discovery" and "Gene". Thank you for your time and have a nice day.Abraham Thompson (talk) 05:26, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Abraham,

I saw your note, and thought I'd be the first to reply. Some of the sources you were using are okay – for example, the "Gene for Speed" paper (PMID 20699471) is a review article, which is generally good – but others were original research papers, which aren't generally good places to start. I think that's the biggest problem. It's a bit backwards from academic writing, which usually wants authors to cite the most important papers. Wikipedia would rather have a recent review article or textbook than historically or scientifically important papers.

Next, I'm a little concerned that a few of the statements might not actually found in the cited sources. For example, does any paper actually say that they "took three years to research why", or are you just inferring that from the publication dates on the two original research papers? If the three-year aspect is important, then there should be a source that directly says it. And if it's not important, then that detail should be left out. Which leads me to my last suggestion for improvement:

Some of what you wrote would be very good for most purposes, but is a little bit wordy for an encyclopedia article. I'm not talking about superficial stylistic details (for example, we refer to researchers simply by their last names, without the "Dr." title), because those are easy for anyone to fix. It's the overall feel for concision and information density. Encyclopedias are supposed to be relatively short and stick to the point, so you can read it and get a feel for the overall subject quickly. So, for example, on the ==Discovery== point, the main point is: Kathryn North discovered it in 1996. Most of the other stuff you wrote isn't really about the discovery (although perhaps it still belongs in the article, in a separate paragraph), and some of it could be written more concisely.

I hope that this comment helps. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Abraham Thompson (talk) 15:25, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

R577X or R577R?

The article currently says "There is an association between the ACTN3 R577X polymorphism in sprint and powerlifting performance at an elite level, and appears to be an association with exercise recovery and lower injury risk.". This implies R577X is a good thing. That is, it implies that the X allele is beneficial. But the subsequent text says the R577XX genotype is bad, and the suggestion that one is good but two are bad made me wonder if someone got the high-order bit flipped.

I looked at the references and dug up other web pages, and if I'm reading them right, they seem to say that it's the absence of R577X-- that is, the presence of the R577R polymorphism, ideally doubled in the R577RR genotype-- that is beneficial.

Would someone who actually understands this subject (not someone like me, who simply knows how to put sentences together :-) please take a fresh look at the research and correct this article if needed? Thanks. 67.188.1.213 (talk) 02:54, 18 September 2020 (UTC)