Talk:Adeno-Associated Viruses as Gene Therapy Vectors

Khalid Eldahan's Comments

I think this topic is not only interesting, but medically very exciting. I think this treatment has potential.

One thing I feel that you should incorporate more into your paper is the life cycle and replication of Adeno-Associated Viruses. This is critical for a thorough understanding of how the vectors are incorporated into host DNA. You give some details of the life cycle here and there throughout your paper, but consider making a section explicitly on the life cycle.

A structural feature of your paper that I thought was excellent is the division of therapeutic applications. You cover treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, cycstic fibrosis, and parkinson's disease. This shows that gene therapy vectors could be used to battle such serious and relatively common diseases.

A complete understanding of all the awesome information on your page would require a general background in virology. Although all of the information you've included is accessible to us based on what we've learned in Microbiology lecture, consider ways to make the material accessible to people with other scientific backgrounds. I wouldn't recommend targeting a non-scientific audience with such a complex topic, but think about having a more general audience when you're discussing the research.

One last thing to include before your page is final: Place your citations in the text more often. You seem to have some pretty solid references, just be sure to give credit to them in the actual text.

Great topic and great job!

Julia DeNiro's comments

I agree with the comment above that this page is extremely interesting. I could understand it reasonably well without a background in virology, but then again, I can understand information about genetics. I also agree that you should put your citations in the text more often--by putting names and dates, like (Slonczewski et al 2005) or by linking with numbers. I know Dr. S suggested with my page that I provide hyperlinks on my figures and also put references to them in the text, and I think it would be very helpful, since we could connect the figures with your text better.

J.T. Knight's comments

This is a very interesting topic. My project delt with vectors, not in the same way as yours, but having an understanding of both topics allowed me to relate both topics. It is amazing how our understanding of genes will allow us to apply different therapies. The replication of the adenoviruses and how it can be used to fix chloride channels that lead to cystic fibrosis was very interesting. Hopefully gene therapy in the future will lead to new discoveries in medicine.