Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology

[edit] About us

This project aims to better organize information in articles related to molecular and cell biology on Wikipedia. A major problem facing biology is organizing the vast amount of information that has been and continues to be collected about genomes, proteomes and cell function. A primary goal of this project is to collect and organize the totality of this information and make it accessible to researchers and laypeople alike by providing an entry point to the wealth of biological data that is currently hidden in obscure databases and journal articles.

If you would like to help, feel free to add yourself to the list of participants, or just look over the How you can help section below. Also of interest is the Molecular and Cellular Biology Portal associated with this project.

[edit] Concrete goals

• Create and perfect articles on the fundamental topics in molecular and cellular biology, with a particular focus on subjects that are discussed at the primary and secondary school level. The perfect article is complete, but accessible to a secondary school student.
• Create a standard system for presenting the information about the proteins and cells that are discussed in Wikipedia articles.

[edit] Similar WikiProjects

The list of active projects has sections for both Biology and Health sciences, but the most relevant seems to be the Medicine Project listed at the Biology Portal and the Medicine Portal. Listed within the Medicine Project, there is a Preclinical Medicine Project that is concerned with the kinds of basic science courses that medical students take, however, there is only minimal emphasis on the type of molecular and cell biology issues that are centered on fundamental concerns such as naming and categorizing genes, proteins and cell types.

Wikipedia articles about cellular and molecular biology topics can also be improved by making use of the Wikiversity Biomedical Research Project.

[edit] Daughter projects

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Cell Signaling
• Wikipedia:Wikiproject Metabolic Pathways
• Wikipedia:WikiProject RNA

[edit] How you can help

Ribbon diagram of Tup1, a transcriptional co-repressor, which adopts a 7-bladed beta-propeller fold. Based on PDB ID 1ERJ.

Look for something to do?

[edit] Improve articles

• The article worklist contains a list of all of the articles that have been identified as being of interest to the project, organized according to category and assigned an importance and quality grade.
• Adopt a stub! There are many, many stubby MCB articles that have the potential to be excellent articles. Some good categories are Cat:Cell biology stubs, Cat:Biochemistry stubs, and Cat:Molecular and cellular biology stubs.
• Contribute to a team effort by participating in the Collaboration of the Month, a monthly collaboration to improve molecular and cellular biology articles to featured article status.
• The article request is where members can go to ask for help in creating specific new articles or in completing particular tasks.
• Upgrade the infoboxes in protein articles to conform to our protein infobox style.
• The picture request is where members can go to ask for help in creating pictures, figures, or diagrams that do not yet exist, replacing those with restrictive copyrights. All images covered by a non-commercial uses disclaimer should be replaced by images generated by Wikipedia users themselves. For proteins, this can be done using the raw structural data from the Protein Data Bank, the contents of which are in the public domain. Please also see our discussion about how to standardize the depiction of proteins.
• Add references. Correct and reliable references are vital if the articles produced by this project are to be a verifiable source of information for our readers. Adding references is easy with this tool. Just submit the PubMed ID and copy and paste the resulting output (xxxx) into the page between <ref> xxxxx </ref> Alternatively, if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox (2.0+), then Wouterstomp's bookmarklet can automate this step from the PubMed abstract page.

[edit] Categorize the many MCB-related articles

• Label articles of interest to the project by putting the {{Wikiproject MCB}} template on the talk pages of all articles of interest to molecular and cellular biology.
• Categories:
  • Cat:Biochemistry
    • Cat:Enzymes
    • Cat:Molecular biology
      • Cat:Proteins
• Stubs:
  • {{biochem-stub}} / Cat:Biochemistry stubs
    • {{enzyme-stub}} / Cat:Enzyme stubs
    • {{molecular-cell-biology-stub}} / Cat:Molecular and cellular biology stubs
      • {{molecular-biology-stub}}
      • {{cell-biology-stub}} / Cat:Cell biology stubs
      • {{protein-stub}} / Cat:Protein stubs
• Categorize protein articles by adding them to the list of types of proteins.
• Make sure that all articles about proteins are placed in the proteins category or one of its subcategories.

[edit] Direct our focus

• Join in discussing proposals, so that we can take our ideas off the drawing board and put them into action. Go there, choose a proposal, read it and add your two cents!
• The Molecular and Cellular Biology Portal always needs to be maintained!

[edit] Improve the project itself

• Help to develop the protein infobox templates. Protein information boxes can be included in each wikipedia article about a particular protein. Eventually, there should also be an information box about cell types.
• Assist in public relations and outreach by recruiting editors interested in molecular and cellular to contribute to Wikipedia.

[edit] Participants

Here is a list of Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject members, together with some of their interests. To join the group simply add yourself to the list of participants, being sure to maintain alphabetical order.