Talk:Citric acid cycle

Two questions:

What's the source for this image? I notice it's been uploaded to Wikipedia, but where's it from?
Shouldn't it be located at Krebs Cycle (or, biologists, should that be Krebs cycle if it's often not used as a proper name)?

it's Krebs cycle (lower case) according to two biochem texts I have handy
no-one calls it that anymore really; almost always its referred to as citric acid cycle.

I replaced it with my Nupedia article on the subject. I doubt much information was lost by that ;) Also, the images are mine, which solves the doubtful copyright problem. Looks like the tranition didn't go too well on the table, please help fixing it. --Magnus Manske

Gee whiz, its so worthwhile to spend time working on diagrams, when the entire article can just be replaced by Nupedia stuff. Wonderful.

Not to mention, of course, that I spent some actual time working on my diagram. Given the current upload protocol, it should be trivial to track the source of images, if you have copyright questions. Anyway, you've succeeded in souring me from drawing a diagram again. Good job! -Dlamming

I didn't know where the diagram was from; actually, I was suspicious of its origin because it looked too professional! Given the text accompanying it (which, as you will surely admit, was not the most complete description ever made;), I intended to be bold in updating pages (that was the recommendation of a higher authority; you know who) and just put the (existing) article in. If I hurt your feelings by removing your work, I'm sorry. If you need an excuse to reduce your input to wikipedia, go right ahead and blame me. Not that you could have said "I made this" on this page when the question came up, or re-replaced my image with yours (I still have it up at Nupedia, I wouldn't have a problem with that;). --Magnus Manske

Contents

1 Naming debate

2 Poll

3 On the pointlessness of polls

4 My 2 cents

5 My 2 and a half canadian cents

6 Not about new vs old - Biology vs Chemistry

7 Horrible problems

8 straight to the point

9 Please Help! Would you Answer my question

Naming debate

Citric acid cycle is the modern term for the Krebs cycle, almost all modern textbooks now use this terminology. Including the most respected two: Alberts et al. (2002) Molecular Biology of the Cell and Lodish et. al. (2000) Molecular Cell Biology, and one of the more well-known biochem textbooks: Berg, Stryer & Tymoczko (2002) Biochemistry (widely referred to as "Stryer"). You can do a search of all the books via PubMed:

Citric acid cycle (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=books&cmd=Search&term=citric+acid+cycle) (108 matches in Stryer, 23 in Alberts, 14 in Lodish)
Krebs cycle (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=books&cmd=Search&term=Krebs+cycle) (45 matches in Stryer, 8 in Alberts, 9 in Lodish) [Further note: if you click on any of these links, the titles of all the sections use citric acid cycle, and Krebs cycle is normally mentioned only once in the text itself]

--Lexor 09:52, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Lir, The article is written completely using the citric acid cycle terminology, and the bulk of the internal wikilinks go to citric acid cycle. Please use the Talk page here before renaming a page which has had a stable name for a while, agreed upon by most contributors (see the discussion above), has many links to that page, and which is already internally consistent with that name. If you do rename, then you also need to take on the responsibility of ensuring no double redirects, which hasn't been done. --Lexor 10:03, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My book is from 2003, making it more recent than your sources. Mine uses Krebs cycle. With more than one "technical name" in use, Krebs seems to be the best compromise. In addition, Krebs cycle gets far more hits on yahoo!; we have a naming convention to use whatever is most commonly used. Lirath Q. Pynnor

But what 2003 book are you using? The references I cited are pretty much the gold standards in molecular, cell biology and biochem. As far as the Wikipedia:Google Test goes, it's not so clear: Krebs cycle gets 30,000 and citric acid cycle (CAC) gets 21,000, which means that there is quite a deal of support for CAC. The Google (or Yahoo) test shouldn't be used blindly either, it's just one data point. As I pointed out in the Talk:Cell biology discussion, I used the Google test as one data point amongst many including: notable gold standard texts, journals names, organization names, and the currently accepted/recommended terminology in the field in question.

Finally if the vote goes to change the page to Krebs cycle, you will need to change all CAC references to "Krebs cycle", and fix all redirects. --Lexor 23:47, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Poll

Krebs cycle (Google:31,400) or Citric acid cycle (Google:21,300)?

Krebs

Lir (this is what my textbooks use)
The Fellowship of the Troll - it always was the Krebs cycle when I was at school (admitedly, back in the day) although it could be a UK/US thing?
Oliver P. 06:56, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)]]
Guillermo3 01:18, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)
→Raul654: Had my mom (a biology teacher) look it up in Campbell's textbook, which is considered to be one of the leaders on the field. It uses Krebs. (What was the year of publication?[168...] --- 5th edition, 1999 →Raul654) (Aha, that's the same book I use...... I have 6th edition, 2002, and that also refers to it solely as the Krebs cycle... see at the very bottom of this page ugen64 23:24, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC))
I was told Krebs cycle at school. Secretlondon 07:31, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)
Krebs cycle at school, again... ugen64 23:24, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)
Krebs; it's what my chemistry friends use. James F. (talk) 05:39, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
jollyshortfellow (I'm a freshman in high school, CA, and my textbook says the Krebs cycle, which was named after the German scientist Hans Krebs. However, my teacher says that either way is ok, since citric acid cycle is used in higher levels of biology.)

Citric acid cycle

Lexor (used by Alberts et al. 2002, Lodish et al. 2000, Stryer et al. 2002, see section above for full references)
Maximus Re x (this is what my textbooks use ["Organic Chemistry" by John McMurry, 5th edition, 2000])
Leave well-enough alone. Peak 09:23, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Citric acid cycle is more clear. --mav 01:24, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Citic acid cycle is more de-personalized. What if 10 years later Krebs' discovery was found to be a result of other scientists' works? 大将军, 都督中外诸军事 (talk) 01:44, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Kokiri (went to scirus (http://scirus.com) for the following: CAC 11,281 results (4942 journal); KC 8779 (2090) and Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle 5534 (2371); always knew it as the the CAC; alternatively call it Krebs CAC - I've seen that too)
Ryan_Cable
tb - This is what i've heard it's called nowadays. I think there must have been, at some point, a move away from naming cycles/disorders/etc after discoverers and researchers, as a surname gives little idea of what the cycle is about. Maybe they should rename Phillips screwdrivers too. :-)
168... 01:14, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC) I think this is how it's taught nowadays, and so how it should be taught here. Nothing wrong with an " (a.k.a. Krebs cycle after Hans Krebs)" in the first line though.
UtherSRG - 168... Has it on the nose. Let's modernize!
Citric acid seems likely to be far better recognised than krebs as an identifier for this cycle. Not as the name but just because citric acid itself is better known, so people are more likely to recognise what is involved. Krebs definitely needs a mention and a redirect from Krebs cycle to here is needed as well. Jamesday 04:35, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
MykReeve - CAC more consistent with current teaching. 09:30, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Ruhrjung 13:31, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC) - most suitable in an international context
Rich0 - While I always think of it as being the Krebs Cycle myself, I'd stick with the status quo, especially since it seems like the textbooks seem to be moving in this direction. I've had professors who've used each of the common terms, and none really stood out that well.

On the pointlessness of polls

Why do we keep having these polls about what rules to apply to individual articles? Surely everyone recognises that consistency is good, and that we should have a single policy on naming conventions that applies equally to all articles, yes? We have a policy here which says to use the most common names for things except when that name is "misleading" (not the case here) or "unreasonably offensive to large groups of people" (also not the case here). It doesn't say to use the most modern term, and it doesn't say to use the term used by the most highly respected professionals. It just says to use the most common term. If anyone wants to change the policy, they should take it up on the policy's talk page. Until the policy is changed (and on the basis of this, it looks like it might be), we should apply it to all articles equally, and not make arbitrary exceptions for whichever articles happen to have polls on their talk pages.

The Google search suggests that "Krebs cycle" is more commonly used. It's possible that the Google search results are skewed in some way, and that really more people use "citric acid cycle". But that would need to be argued. Anyway, is anyone even claiming that? If not, then "Krebs cycle" is what we should be using, regardless of the outcome of this poll. -- Oliver P. 06:56, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Google Test should be but one data point. I have argued (see above) that citric acid cycle is the current standard usage, especially so in current textbooks etc. Also Krebs cycle doesn' "win" by an order of magnitude, it's a 3:2 ratio which doesn't make it win "hands-down". I think blindly applying the policy on the basis of Google ranking would be a bad thing. This is not an "arbitrary exception" either because these discussions tend to arise for articles for which there are good reasons for their being a discussion, for many people I think citric acid cycle is the most common term. I think the Google test doesn't clinch it one way or the other, so having a discussion is a valuable thing. --Lexor 21:34, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Okay, let's drop the talk about Google for now. I admit that the results of a Google test may not be an accurate reflection of real-life usage, for a number of reasons. And I admit that since the ratio is only 3:2 in favour of "Krebs cycle", my arguing this point might seem rather petty. However, there does seem to be a fundamental difference of opinion on what policy Wikipedia should use on naming pages, and that needs to be addressed.

You are arguing that "citric acid cycle" is the current standard usage (used in modern publications and so on); I am arguing that "Krebs cycle" is the most common usage (in minds of the world's populace as a whole). The two propositions are not mutually exclusive, and may well both be true. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that they are both true. Now which title should we use? Should we title pages according to current standard usage or most common usage? If we title this page according to current standards, and others according to common usage, then we are making an arbitrary exception. Why should we title this page according to current standards, and not others? If you think that we should do the same for all pages, then the policy needs to be changed. If you don't think that we should do the same for all pages, then you need to explain why you think this page is a special case. -- Oliver P. 07:39, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I assume we mean "standard" in sense 2 of the American Heritage Dictionary (http://www.bartleby.com/61/18/S0701800.html)

1. Serving as or conforming to a standard of measurement or value. 2. Widely recognized or employed as a model of authority or excellence: a standard reference work. 3. Acceptable but of less than top quality: a standard grade of beef. 4. Normal, familiar, or usual: the standard excuse. 5. Commonly used or supplied: standard car equipment.

Given that, I think the answer to your question is obviously we go by the current standard. You could argue that common usage should be designated the standard, but if you concede that another usage is standard, than you should agree to go by that one...or back up and choose another word than "standard."168... 03:06, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the word "standard" is ambiguous, and perhaps my use of it above wasn't entirely clear. When I said that the term "citric acid cycle" might well be the "current standard", I meant that it may well be the term most commonly used in the latest chemistry textbooks, which is what people seemed to be arguing about. However, I am arguing that the question of what the current standard is is irrelevant to how we should name this page. Our naming convention (the Wikipedia standard, if you like) is to use the most common name. Given that most people haven't bought the latest chemistry textbooks, it is not necessarily the case that the term most familiar to the general public will be the one that is currently being pushed by the textbook writers. And see below... -- Oliver P. 02:56, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You certainly haven't convinced me that CAC is the current usage in textbooks. Im sure textbooks use it, but listing a couple of yours hardly proves your case. Lirath Q. Pynnor

I haven't done an exhaustive search on all textbooks, you are correct. But I have cited three key textbooks that are used in at least one biochemistry, molecular biology or cell biology course in a significant percentage of English-speaking universities in the world. Alberts et al. is probably the most highly regarded molecular biology textbook in the world, of course, it doesn't always mean it is "right" all the time, but it does reflect and set standards in molecular biology terminology in the same way that the Oxford English Dictionary does for language. You have still not told me which text you are using. --Lexor 10:14, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what book I have, there are lots of books and obviously Krebs cycle is used, your referring to so-called "key" textbooks does nothing to indicate what the common usage is. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Granted it may not absolutely indicate common usage, but given the widespread use of these three textbooks in a large chunk of the English speaking world it may indicate the direction. In the absence of a complete survey of all textbooks, it's still an important data point. Could you please humour me and tell me which textbook you are referring to? That way we would have at least 5 books as data points: my 3, Organic Chemistry by Murray (which Maximus Rex lists) and your book. I'm genuinely curious to know which books still use the Krebs cycle terminology. --Lexor 12:11, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My 2 cents

Both 'Citric acid cycle' and 'Krebs cycle' are correct. I was taught it is the 'Krebs cycle' both in high school and in my lower division biology courses. My upper division courses and instructors, however, tended to use 'citric acid cycle' more often and that usage seems to becoming more common. I have nothing more to say other than that and would be happy with either title. Wouldn't it better to direct all the time and effort put into this discussion into actually expanding this article? --mav 11:09, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[Peak:] Yes, that's why I voted to keep it as it is, but you haven't recorded a vote so far as I can see. Peak 05:11, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mav's vote was recorded above to keep title as citric acid cycle. I also agree that we could better spend our time improving the article, which is why I was suggesting that we keep the article the status quo in the first place. --Lexor 08:30, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think Krebs deserves some credit for his work. Lirath Q. Pynnor

[Peak:] I'm sure we're all agreed that Krebs deserves full credit for his work. But that cab best be addressed in the article itself; please also note that no-one has suggested that there shouldn't be a REDIRECT from 'Krebs cycle', as there is now.Peak 05:11, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And I think it can best be addressed by referring to this as the Krebs cycle, like most of the people on the internet do. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Can we just leave things as they are Lir, please? The vote looks to swing to the status quo of citric acid cycle. The vote request has been listed for a while right now, and I think it's fair to say that the status quo is upheld. If we did change it, then the article should refer to consistent terminology throughout, and all CAC -> Krebs cyle (and all links would need to be fixed, there are far more links to citric acid cycle than Krebs cycle, and all broken double redirects would also need to be fixed). Rather than do all that: let's just leave the article with the current name. We can tinker with the intro sentence to award Krebs as much credit as is needed. --Lexor 08:30, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you missed my question above, Lexor. Should we title pages according to current standard usage or most common usage? You admit above that the present title "may not absolutely indicate common usage", so presumably you're arguing for the former (as is 168...). However, our naming convention says to go for the latter. The poll would seem to indicate that there is a lot of opposition to the convention, but maybe the people who have contributed here aren't representative of the Wikipedia community as a whole. As I said above, rather than debating each page in turn, and ending up applying different conventions to each page, we should discuss the general policy (on the policy's talk page), and then apply whatever is agreed to all pages uniformly. -- Oliver P. 02:56, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think you are misreading the naming conventions. For example, there's this section...

"Don't Overdo it

"In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading (For example: "tidal wave" would be a misleading title since these phenomena have nothing to do with tides), then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative (tsunami, for example)."

I guess one could argue that the analogy with the case we're discussing isn't perfect, but "tsunami" strikes me as a cognoscenti's term, and so is something like the "current standard" in our scenario. I think most of that policy page is about deciding what to do in the absence of text books defining the standard. When a "current standard" exists, it seems to me from the "tsunami" example that the policy is to use the current standard. This is just common sense. Wikipedia is not trying to refashion established academic disciplines. What people come to an encyclopedia for is a summary of accepted scholarship, not pop wisdom or original scholarship that's never been peer reviewed or published elsewhere.168... 04:49, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding the "tidal wave" example. It is brought up as an example of a misleading title. It is explained as follows: '"tidal wave" would be a misleading title since these phenomena have nothing to do with tides'. (I think this is a ludicrous argument, incidentally. But that's an argument for another day.) Academic standards aren't mentioned. Nowhere on the page is there even a hint that the policy is about "what to do in the absence of text books defining the standard". If the policy was to use academic text books first, it would say so! No-one is suggesting any of the other things you mention ("refashion[ing] established academic disciplines", "pop wisdom", or "original scholarship"), so I don't know why you bring those up. The article body should contain a summary of accepted scholarship, of course; the title is little more than a way of finding the article, and this should be made as easy as possible for the readers - i.e. the general public, not the academic community. Anyway, I've brought this matter up on the relevant talk page, so we should continue this discussion there. -- Oliver P. 06:53, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"Tsunami" does not embody the principle of "easy as possible for the readers," most of whom almost certainly say "tidal wave." Given that the policy page considers tsunami examplary in the context of "Don't Overdo it," I believe the policy is that the appropriate title is not always the word or phrase most popularly associated with the topic of the article. We'll have to agree to disagree about the pertinence of "refashioning," etc. Titles are part of scholarship as far as I'm concerned.168... 07:08, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My 2 and a half canadian cents

Well, it appears that my college-level Bio textbook refers to it as the Krebs cycle... while "Citric Acid cycle" doesn't even appear in the chapter (except as "it's also caled the citric acid cycle"), nor in the index (at all)... ugen64 22:39, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

I'll add some more points... the chief arguments against using Krebs cycle seem to be either: "Leave well enough alone", "used more in modern textbooks", and clarity/depersonalization. Well, Krebs received a Nobel Prize in Medicine.... so I suppose we should also rename all the radioactive elements named after people (who knows, Curie could have been a plagiarist, therefore, Curium isn't a good element name). Leave well enough alone doesn't deal specifically with the problem... and anyway, if that were the case, Krebs was the common name at first, therefore, it would be leaving well enough alone. I can't argue with "used more in modern textbooks", but there are some rather reputable biology textbooks that refer to it solely as the Krebs cycle (including Campbell, which I referred to above)... I really do not care if we change this article's name, I'm just throwing some points out. ugen64 23:32, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

Anyone considered whether your textbooks are US or from 'The rest of the World'? Personally, I never heard of Krebs until I saw this discussion, so I would like to ask whether Krebs is used mostly in US? (Might also be the case that I always paid more attention to chemistry classes than to biology...:) Maybe omeone could take a look at all these books referred to and see whether there are any correlation between (US/UK, Biology/Chemistry, Year of print...) and usage of Krebbs/CACMikez

Not about new vs old - Biology vs Chemistry

I'm told that it's not about Krebs cycle being the old accepted term and CAC being the new term. My girlfriend (biologist) told me that's it's more about your area. Krebs has always been used by biologists. In recent years, however, chemists started referring to it instead as CAC and TCAC. But biologists still call it Krebs. →Raul654 09:20, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

I think thats just more reason to change the name to Krebs, the "common" person coming to view this page will probably not be a chemist -- they will probably, at most, only be familiar with the topic from having read about it in a biology class. Lirath Q. Pynnor

It seems unlikely that there will be more people coming here who have studied biological chemistry then chemistry. Regardless, it's mentioned earlier that several of the leading textbooks on the biology side have switched to citric acid cycle, so it seems that this may be a generational shift, with older readers using krebs and newer citric acid. Jamesday 22:08, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Its claimed earlier that several of the leading textbooks on the biology side have switched to CAC -- its hardly proven, several other users have documented the opposite phenomenon -- in short, the only way to tell which is more common is via google/yahoo; where its clear that Krebs is more common.
- It may seem unlikely that more people coming here will have studied chemistry, rather than biological chemistry -- however, the Krebs cycle is covered in basic freshman level biology courses -- it is not mentioned in the equivalent level of chemistry course. Lirath Q. Pynnor

When I took freshman bio in high school, we called it the Krebs cycle. Then I took two years of high school chem, and we didn't call it anything, because we didn't discuss it. I don't know what criteria you want to use, but I'm pretty sure "Krebs cycle" is the name people know. My two cents. Isomorphic 19:21, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

- Yeah, think about it. Why would chemistry students discuss the citric acid/Krebs cycle for any reason? Biochemistry's a different subject altogether, anyway... ugen64 15:21, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Horrible problems

What happened to this page? Bensaccount seems to have dissected it... ugen64 21:07, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

straight to the point

I need help---my "hippy", I say this endearingly, friend said citric acid is bad for you--209.165.44.104 07:19, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC) but as a scientist by nature I know it is naturally in everything. Christine

The citric acid cycle is not bad for you. It is simply a mechanism for breaking down fuel molecules (ie. sugar) and providing ATP (energy). Bensaccount 22:55, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No, she was asking if citric acid in general is bad for you, methinks. It's not good for you if you drink it straight, but yes, it's found in many citrus fruits and naturally in most animals as a part of the citric acid cycle. It's not bad for you, unless you decide to drink 100% citric acid or something... ugen64 17:14, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

Please Help! Would you Answer my question

-If Diabetes Mellitus Directly affect TCA Cycle Reactions or Not?

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