Talk:Non-mevalonate pathway

This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Statins exhibit properties that are beyond their lipid-lowering effects. These non-lipid-lowering properties involve the inhibition of the isoprenoid pathway through decreased synthesis of many nonsteroidal isoprenoid compounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Non-mevalonate_pathway&action=edit

This figure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-mevalonate_pathway.svg and the table down in the "Reactions" section are immensely useful, but they suffer the serious problem that they do not use consistent naming between one another, which causes some confusion. For instance the figure shows the enzyme for the last step as "HDR" while the table shows it as "HMB-PP reductase" and suggest the only appropriate abbreviations for it are "LytB, IspH" but not "HDR". Similarly for the second to last step the figure shows the enzyme as "HDS" while the table lists the enzyme as "HMB-PP synthase" and the only appropriate abbreviations as "GcpE, IspG". I was really confused and had to leave the wiki and look up a bunch of stuff all over the net (and off) to figure out that both of these things naming schemes are correct. It seems like the quick simple solution would be to add the figure enzyme name abbreviations into the table in addition to the ones already listed (there is plenty of space in the table to add some three letter abbreviations). I.e. change the entry on the table from "HMB-PP reductase (LytB, IspH)" to "HMB-PP reductase (HDR, LytB, IspH)" and change "HMB-PP synthase (GcpE, IspG)" to "HMB-PP synthase (HDS, GcpE, IspG)", etc... to keep all the names/abbreviations on the same wiki page consistent and thus avoid confusion.46.17.167.86 (talk) 11:09, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

 Done The table now contains the abbreviations for the enzymes and molecules that appear in the pathway scheme. If they are in bold in the table, they are only in the scheme's source article (Qidwai et al.) If they are not in bold, but appear in both the table and the scheme, they are more generally accepted abbreviations, appearing in more articles (e.g., Eisenreich et al.). Note, this is in part a problem, generally at Wikipedia, where images can be imported without attribution of the intellectual content (see ongoing discussion at Wikiproject Medicine, Talk page).

Otherwise note, the scheme that appears is a verbatim reproduction of the image in Qidwai, et al. (and may indeed infringe copyright, it is such an exact copy). The source is not the highest quality of chem/biochem review. Had I reviewed the manuscript for the journal, I would not have allowed the nonstandard abbreviations. I was just lucky to happen upon the article that was source of the image, and so I know the story. But in general, we need to:

* indicate the source of complex biosynthetic images;

* not reproduce images from a second/third-tier journal as sole source; and

* when adapting images, truly adapt them—make them our own in terms of style and content, drawing from multiple sources;

and in so doing, ensure the content is accurate to more than one source (structures, stereochemistry, complete reactants and products each reaction, etc., because scientists make small mistakes in journals, esp. in introductory figures), ensure that all abbreviations used are standard, etc.

Bottom line, this issue has been addressed, but in the messiest way. We introduce non-standard abbreviations into the table, so table and scheme match—rather than having gotten the abbreviations in the image, to standard, by consulting more than one good source in creating the image in the first place. Good enough for now, I hope. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 02:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See this other brief discussion., to start, at the Talk page of one of this pathway's enzymes.

The backstory is that there are various groups studying (e.g., trying to develop inhibitors of) this pathway, in the three distinct phyla/kingdoms of organisms this article describes. The result of this is that there is not just one nomenclature for all the enzymes and all the genes. (The molecules are largely fine in terms of naming, though there is some variability as well, in molecule abbreviations, in good papers between the three organismal veins of research.)

The relevant example present in the initial diverting link was one in particular that lead me to place the article tag. It regards the naming of this enzyme:

• DOXP reductase, as it is named here;
• DXP reductoisomerase, as it is variantly named at the enzyme's main article at wikipedia; and
• MEP synthase, as is named in a full half of articles on bacterial efforts (as the opening link notes).

Bottom line, for a general article on the pathway, we cannot choose one set of nomenclature for enzymes, genes, etc. (i.e., we can't present the bacterial, or the protozoan, or the plant, to the exclusion of the other two effect types of organisms). The nomenclature, since not singular in the literature, cannot be singular here.

Please leave the article tag until all the articles for all the enzymes for this pathway are checked at Wikipedia, against this article, so that all articles (pathway and component enzymes) are consistent, and not confusing. For the confusion of a general lay reader on this matter of discrepant nomenclature, see the immediately preceding Talk section. That issue was resolved—though the solution is imperfect, the table and scheme are no longer discrepant with regard to the names/abbreviations that appear. The "do it right the first time solution" is presented above. Cheers, Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 02:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One OH group flips in the conversion from DXP to MEP. This is correctly depicted in the scheme, but in the table a wrong epimer (threitol) is shown for both MEP and CDP-ME. In the molecular structure for CDP-MEP this stereochemic mistake is corrected again. The same wrong images are shown in the pages of the DXR and CMS enzymes.

Is it possible to change the title so it at least includes 'MEP pathway'? This is by far the more commonly used name in literature, at least in microbiology. Cyanofun (talk) 14:17, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]