Saturday, September 5, 2015

Blog 9: Annotated Bibliography Draft 1

https://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/1316435421/
Bernardes de Jesus B, Vera E, Schneeberger K, et al. Telomerase gene therapy in adult and old mice delays aging and increases longevity without increasing cancer. EMBO Molecular Medicine. 2012;4(8): 691-704. doi: 10.1002/emmm.201200245

Annotation: A research article titled, "Telomerase gene therapy in adult and old mice delays aging and increases longevity without increasing cancer" (2012), Maria A. Blasco and her colleagues suggest that gene therapy can be applied to repair the tips of chromosomes thus extending life expectancy promoting the use of vectors to repair genes. They support their thesis by providing results from an experiment conducted on mice to show that their life spans were greater than those of untreated mice which proved to be successful. Their purpose is to show their audience that gene therapy is a viable option. They do so in a formal, scientific format to show credibility with the discerning scientific community. I might use this to show a concrete example of gene therapy since many sites generally say it helps repair DNA, but does not go deeper into the how or where.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8540535352
Bersenev A. Tweets [Twitter Page]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/cells_nnm. Published March 2008. Accessed September 4, 2015.

Annotation: A twitter feed with no particular title by Alexey Bersenev (created in 2008), claims that gene therapy has a bright future yet is still in its youth so it has its setbacks. He develops his thesis through a series of tweets backed up by laboratory results from other scientific/general articles which show mostly advances in gene therapy technology as it becomes more applicable to more parts of the human body, but also includes any failures as to create a more balanced view of the issue. His main purpose is to inform possible readers, primarily who have a fundamental understanding of this process, of the progress of gene therapy maybe even to vie for its feasibility. He does so in an informal manner allowing the general audience along with his well educated peers to understand the applications. If he constantly updates his twitter, I could use this page to check if there are any updates to the gene therapy controversy so that I could incorporate this into a history/pro/con portion of my paper.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scissors.svg
Maron DF. Controversial Gene-Editing Approach Gains Ground. Scientific America. http://www.sci entificamerican.com/article/controversial-gene-editing-approach-gains-ground/. Published April 23, 2015. Accessed September 3, 2015.

Annotation: An article from Scientific America titled "Controversial Gene-Editing Approach Gains Ground" (2015) by Dina Fine Maron, argues that despite being morally sketchy, snipping out pieces of faulty mitochondrial DNA could possible be beneficial. Maron substantiates her argument by discussing the importance of mitochondria then introducing a method that can prevent defects from occurring in future generations of children that simply prevents defected DNA from being passed on. Her purpose is to persuade her audience of ordinary readers or even scientific readers to accept this new method despite its controversy. The author does incorporate biological jargon, but crafts her article in such a way that the average reader could understand the gist of the article to connect with the general audience or those who do not feel strongly either way about this. I could obviously use this to argue for gene therapy and like the first source, show a concrete example of how gene therapy could benefit people.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/soflasun/6261112692
Rojahn SY. When Will Gene Therapy Come to the U.S?. MIT Technology Review. http://www.tech nologyreview.com/news/519071/when-will-gene-therapy-come-to-the-us/. Published September 30,2013. Accessed September 4, 2015.

Annotation: In an social media post in MIT Technology Review titled "When Will Gene Therapy Come to the U.S." (2013), the author, Susan Young Rojahn suggests that soon, some gene therapy techniques may be legalized in the United States. She bolsters her thesis by gathering information from a research and opinions from researchers to reach a plausible prediction that the use of gene therapy to treat diseases will soon be made available. She is more so trying to persuade the general audience who are in the middle of the controversy that gene therapy is imminent. She does this by using facts and figures from her findings to allow her "middle-of-the-road audience" to better visualize the situation. I could use this to introduce other methods of gene therapy aside from the CRISPR method that are gaining ground in research broadening the scope so that gene therapy is not just one method, but is a general term for various methods with different success rates.

Frontispiece of the "Rudolphine Tables" published by Johannes Kepler in 1627
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology#/media/File:Libr0310.jpg
Wirth T, Parker N, Yla-Herttuala S. History of gene therapy. Science Direct. 2013; 525(2):162-169. doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2013.03.137

Annotation: A research article titled "History of Gene Therapy" (2013) by Thomas Wirth, Nigel Parker, and Seppo Yla-Herttuala claims gene therapy is constantly improving throughout history despite being met with moral opposition They support their thesis by chronologically stating significant milestones in gene therapy up until the article was published followed by the ethical issues involved. Their purpose is geared toward persuading an educated audience who is preferably an expert in gene therapy that their analysis is correct. They convey this information in a formal manner to connect to other scientists so that these scientists may refer to this article. I could use this to place gene therapy into a historical context, documenting its course and noting the improvements made up until today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_transfer#/media/File:Embryo,_8_cells.jpg
Zimmer C. Editing Human Embryos: So This Happened. National Geographic. http://phenomena.nati onalgeographic.com/2015/04/22/editing-human-embryos-so-this-happened/. Published April 22, 2015. Accessed September 3, 2015.

Annotation: In a National Geographic article titled "Editing Human Embryos: So This Happened", Carl Zimmer asserts that gene therapy has improved over the years, but still needs to be studied further before it could be applied to healthcare. Zimmer supports his thesis by presenting a historical perspective of gene therapy then moving forward in time to today where some research has yielded failed results while others were successful meaning that the use of this still has room for improvement. His purpose is to inform a wide range of people from anti-gene therapy to pro-gene therapy. He conveys his information in an understandable way as to include the general audience and placing it in scientific context to connect with proponents of all sides, but tends to lean a bit more toward the pro side. Some parts of this could be used to argue against gene therapy, but should be used more so to say that gene therapy has some way to go until it can reach hospitals.

Reflection: After reading the blog posts of Kat and Spencer, I saw that although the topics of their controversies relative to mine is slightly different, the information or format of the bibliographies are very similar. Kat's sources were cited similarly to my sources both being in AMA format although some small nuances set them apart such as what information was included. For example, her's internet source citation used the phrase "available at" which I did not use. This could be due to using different editions of the AMA or different websites with slightly different formats. Just the fact that her bibliography formatting reassures me that I am using the correct format for my blog. As for Spencer's blog, it seems to be formatted in CSE style which is used by biologists. This style seemed strikingly similar to the AMA style, but the information is just oriented differently. Both of them made me realize that I needed to emphasize my use of the articles which will be applied in the next bibliography. As discussed in class, people in the United States want to value intellectual property which is the reason for the citations. The different styles seem to serve the purpose of separating article genres from each other, yet still contain almost the same information. The fact that different citation styles are used did not surprise me, but the fact that there was even more for each discipline did.

All citations in AMA Style 10th edition from University of Illinois
(Annotation formats from pages 211 to 213 in A Students Guide to First-Year Writing 36th Edition)

4 comments:

  1. Your summaries about the citations are very well written and include all of the required criteria. Some of the citations are completely correct but some others have a few different things. You don't need to have the URL in the exact citation, rather have the title and italicize it. You do have the access dates however which is good! Other than the URL your citations are correct!

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    1. Maybe I did not make clear what style I am using. I am using the AMA style which is different and examples of AMA show it having URLs if it is a website. A format of the style should be on top of the page on the AMA hyperlink. Thanks for commenting.

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  2. It is awesome how long and thorough your citations are. You clearly put a lot of time and effort into writing them. How did you decide to use AMA over CSE? This is something I struggled with while doing my research.

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    1. Thank you! I decided to use AMA in accordance with my major in college which is Pre-Physiology.

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