Talk:RecA

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I have a question: If I where to transform an E.coli strain with a plasmid (with canamycin resistanse), would it have anything to say if the strain was recA(-) or recA(+)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisel (talk • contribs) 10:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

-Kanamycin? RecA is encoded by the genome of the strain you are using to clone, so the manual should specify RecA+/-. Plasmid vectors are RecA- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.253.133.106 (talk) 16:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of the name?

If anyone could provide why this protein was named RecA, it would be great.

NingOTI (talk)— Preceding undated comment added 20:42 April 28, 2018 (UTC)

Citation format

@CambrianCrab: The originally established citation style in this article followed the Vancouver system for author formatting (diff). Prior to your first edit, the predominant citation style still adhered to the Vancouver system (). Per WP:CITEVAR, the established citation style should not be changed without consensus. I therefore object to the change in style and propose reverting to the originally established format. Boghog (talk) 18:22, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

@Boghog Hi there! I'm a little confused. Prior to my first edit some refs used vauthors, some used author=, others used author#=. The first five references used a semicolon to separate author names. Two refs listed the final author with an ampersand, one didn't list all the authors and instead put "et. al", others just listed the authors. The article hadn't been edited for content in four years, so it wasn't as if there were outliers that had just been added. I am fairly certain that would not be considered a consistent citation style. CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 23:31, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi CambrianCrab. I agree the citations had become inconsistent (mixed parameters and formatting). However, per WP:CITEVAR, what matters is the underlying style, which in this article was originally Vancouver. Later inconsistencies don’t establish a new style. They simply indicate a need for cleanup. In addition to standardization, your edits also shifted the citation style, which would require consensus per WP:CITEVAR. I suggest reverting to Vancouver and then normalizing the references (e.g., consistent use of vauthors). Boghog (talk) 16:41, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Hmm...that's not how I read CITEVAR. CITEVAR lists "imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles" as standard practice. I came to an article with an inconsistent citation style, saw that the citation style had been inconsistent for over 10 years, and imposed a consistent citation style. CITEVAR doesn't specify which citation style should be imposed.

If you'd like, we can start a discussion on the CITEVAR talk about how to interpret that part of the guidance, but at the moment I wouldn't support changing to use the vauthors parameter.

As a slight aside, part of the reason I'd oppose vauthors is that I manually verified the data in each citation. Swapping out for vauthors would remove at least several hours of work validating authors' full names. While it's been on the back-burner for a bit, I have been planning to try to build out a network of articles from here, including biographical information on the people who've studied it. Verifying full names in the references was the first step. CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 23:48, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I think we’re largely in agreement that the citations needed cleanup. Where we differ is on whether that cleanup should also entail a change in the underlying style. My reading of WP:CITEVAR is that, even in cases of inconsistency, editors should try to identify and preserve the originally established style where it can be reasonably determined, rather than selecting a new one unilaterally. In this case, the earlier stable versions point to Vancouver as the base style. Boghog (talk) 05:35, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I think I'd be more inclined to agree with you if the diff you linked to had multiple references formatted the same way with vauthors, or if the article had entirely or almost entirely used vauthors at some point within 10 years of my first edit. That's not really the case here though. The version you linked to () had a single untemplated reference. Obviously that citation style wasn't retained, and neither of us think we should switch to that.

I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on what CITEVAR says about this situation. If you want, we can start a discussion on WT:CITE to try to get some fresh eyes, or we can just agree to disagree on CITEVAR and discuss what citation style should be used in this article going forward.

I'm obviously partial to the current format, but I'm open to changing my mind if you have any other reasons you think the vauthor parameter should be used :) CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 22:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:CITEVAR concerns the citation style used in an article (i.e., how citations are presented to readers, rather than the underlying template parameters). The guideline states that “each article should use one citation method or style throughout,” and citation templates are designed to present formatted references to readers (see Help:Citation_Style_1). Accordingly, changes that alter the rendered appearance of citations (e.g., punctuation, author formatting) fall within the scope of CITEVAR.

In this article, there is strong evidence that Vancouver-style author formatting (e.g., “Smith J”) is an established style. The first citation added to the article already followed Vancouver-style formatting (diff). In a 2014 revision, 12 out of 13 citations use Vancouver-style author names. This predates the introduction of the |vauthors= parameter (added to the live CS1 module on 25 July 2015), meaning that this formatting cannot be attributed to template behavior and instead reflects editorial practice within the article. The same pattern persists in a much more recent revision, where Vancouver-style author formatting remains predominant. This indicates continuity over roughly a decade.

Given (a) the high degree of consistency in earlier versions, (b) the fact that this formatting predates template support for Vancouver-style authors, and (c) its persistence in later versions, the use of Vancouver-style author names appears to be an established, reader-visible citation style in this article under CITEVAR. Boghog (talk) 07:38, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I feel like we’re getting too into the weeds here. I do think CITEVAR is intentionally vague because some things need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. We disagree on how it applies in this case. We can go get more opinions, but I doubt we’ll get a firm rewrite of CITEVAR that specifies exactly what to do in these cases.

I think it would be more productive if we just talk about the citation style we should use here going forward. Especially since we need to have that discussion regardless, it would save us potentially having to change the citation style multiple times (WP:BURO)

I already mentioned part of why I think the current citation style is a good fit. I was also reminded that I had several pages of notes for this article I never implemented and am starting to add now. Modifying all of that to use vauthors is non-trivial and would make future edits more difficult as I’ll have to then go back through each reference to re-verify authors full names when I start on the biographical parts.

Are there any advantages to Vancouver that we'd lose out on with the current style? CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 22:32, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@CambrianCrab: This is a straightforward application of CITEVAR. Changing the rendered format of authors from Harvard to Vancouver is a change in citation style. Full stop. Per CITEVAR, changes to an article’s established citation style (including how authors are displayed) require consensus.

I find that including spelled-out first names, excessive punctuation, and especially the verbose use of first/last name parameters is distracting and overwhelms the rest of the citation. For sources with many authors (common in biomedical literature), the large number of first/last parameters becomes unwieldy. In contrast, the vauthors parameter is much more compact (it doesn’t clutter the wikitext), ensures consistent author formatting (the first parameter in contrast may contain spelled out names, initials with or without periods), and provides better error checking. Any |vauthors= data that does not conform to the Vancouver system will trigger an error, whereas |last= and |first= accept any text, including nonsensical input like "!@#$%^&*". Finally, Vancouver-style author formatting offers a cleaner, more modern appearance.

Assuming that a citation has been indexed in PubMed, there should be no need to manually check author details. Numerous tools can automatically create a fully populated reference template from a URL, DOI, or PMID (see, for example, Help:Citation tools), including the Wikipedia template filling tool, which returns Vancouver-style authors. Finally, I have a script that can rapidly convert first/last to vauthors parameters. Boghog (talk) 09:14, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Yanno, this is a really silly thing to be spending so much time on. Clearly this article is important to you, so I'm just gonna do something else.

Obviously the CITEVAR thing isn't clear-cut or I wouldn't have disagreed with you. You should probably start an RfC to change “established style” to “first rendered style” if that’s how it’s supposed to be interpreted (and specify that has to be the style implemented in the line about inconsistent articles).

There's still a lot of content I hadn't added, but most of the references are in so you should be able to just pull from them. The Clinical Significance section could use better sources, but I didn't have to dig very hard to find the ones on my list, so that part shouldn't be difficult either. Once all the sections are rewritten/expanded the lead will need some edits to match, but I'd expect they'll be fairly minor. The image could be better too, but that's low-priority.

Anyway, I'm taking this off my watchlist now. Good luck with the rest of the edits CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 21:46, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

@CambrianCrab: Sorry. I didn’t mean to discourage you from working on the article. At the risk of belaboring the point, there have been several RfCs on CITEVAR addressing its scope. The most relevant conclusion I have found is There is consensus that any change in coding that alters the visual output whatsoever requires consensus. —Rob RFC: Is a change in citation markup method a change in citation style? In that same RfC, however, there was less consensus on whether CITEVAR applies to changes in coding itself.

I will try to implement your suggestions above. I started by creating a new graphic, File:RecA DNA 3CMT.png. I’m not sure it’s an improvement, but I added a magenta surface to the DNA to help distinguish it from the protein. I also colored the protein in a rainbow scheme so that the N- to C-terminus can be more easily traced. The overall structure is quite complex and difficult to simplify, at least in PyMOL. Boghog (talk) 09:16, 12 April 2026 (UTC)