Cev455

I think your page on RNA Hydrolysis is overall really good. I was not sure if there was an original page to this topic, but I could not find it when I looked it up. Nonetheless, I still have a few recommendations in regards to the content of your page, as well as the figure I believe you tried to upload.

Content

First, I think your introduction was good, as it was short and concise. However, if I was reading this introduction as someone who has little science/biochemistry background, I probably wouldn’t know what you are really talking about and why, in comparison to DNA hydrolysis, it is so different. From what I’ve read about RNA hydrolysis, I would include perhaps a few of these facts in your introduction:

--Polynucleotides, such as DNA, are usually stable in aqueous solutions near neutral PH. For DNA specifically, half-life for spontaneous hydrolysis oh phosphodiester linkages are about 200 million year. This makes DNA, in comparison to RNA much more stable and suitable for storage of genetic information, as the structure stays in tact.

--In contrast, RNA is much more prone to hydrolysis and its structure does not usually stay in tact for as long as DNA does.

--Finally, your introduction already mentioned this, but the reason for spontaneous hydrolysis in RNA is due to the presence of 2’ OH group, which provides an internal nucleophile for transesterification of the 3’, 5’ phosphodiester linkage. As a result, there is a scission of the polynucleotide backbone. Therefore, RNA is not very good for storage of genetics information.

Secondly, I think you did an excellent job at discussing each topic of RNA hydrolysis. Since, there is only so much you can say about this topic I think you did an excellent job at summarizing it. For instance, you first described this basic mechanism of RNA hydrolysis in its own paragraph and section. Next, you described auto-hydrolysis in the next section. This part is very important because it makes it different than DNA hydrolysis. For this reason, I think it is very important that you include the differences between RNA and DNA hydrolysis in your introduction, so that your readers know why you are talking about auto-hydrolysis and its spontaneity in the first place. Next, you provide a very important part of RNA hydrolysis when spontaneous hydrolysis is less likely—enzyme cleavage. You did a good job at describing this process step-by-step, which has much more needed detail than the other sections. Finally, to end this Wikipedia page, you wrote about the possible applications RNA hydrolysis, which in my opinion, was not expected. Nonetheless, it was a good conclusion to the page.

Another thing I think you did well was highlighting the important terms/concepts linked to their respective Wikipedia pages. Reading over your page, you highlighted these terms at least once. I also thought they were appropriate. For instance, you highlighted simple words such as phosphodiester bonds, nucleophile, enzymes, and so on, for people who have very little science background. In addition, you highlighted words like hammerhead ribozyme, Ribonuclease A, hairpin ribozyme, and so on, for people who already have a good science background, but do not know about these small details. Also, I think you did not duplicate anything other content on Wikipedia, especially because I could not even find this information on the RNA Wikipedia page.

Figures

As for your figures, I did not see any on your page. There was a link to one of them; however, I could not get access to the image. I cannot talk much about this image for that reason, but you should make sure the image is very specific to the text. The title of your image is RNA Hydrolysis Mechanism, so I’m guessing this should be a problem. I would just make sure the image is original.

References

As for your references, you had six (6) total references. The references ranged from textbooks, to journals, to even articles in print. So I think you did a good job with this. You also referenced things when needed. You referenced things at least 12 times. You also did not reference things that were just simple information that could be found anywhere.

Overall

In conclusion, I think you did an excellent job at summarizing what RNA hydrolysis is. As I said, I think you need to improve your introduction, because I don’t think if a person who had little science background were reading it to get some quick background, would know what the importance of it is. Also, I think it would be nice to have that figure just to illustrate the process for visual learners. Finally, I think your references are all appropriate and their sources vary.

Dialaali (talk) 18:21, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Response to Peer Review

We will edit the introduction to try to make it more understandable for a wider audience. Your suggestions have been helpful in this so far.

As for our figure, we have made an original one and this one should be properly uploaded.

Thank you very much for the feedback!

srclough (talk) and Cev455 (talk)