Talk:Maternal effect

I think that maternal effect and maternal inheritance are distinct phenomena. I've never seen the term "maternal effect" used to describe maternal inheritance of DNA. The two phenomenon are clearly distinct (both in classical genetics and molecular genetics). AdamRetchless 02:55, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You're right. They are distinct phenomena, and the distinction is very important in elucidating how each event happens. I'm changing the article and some of the articles it references to reflect this. GuildNavigator84 12:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree. I have never seen "maternal effect" used to describe maternal inheritance. I have consulted three authoritative references, and all three distinguish clearly between the two terms. I am going to change the second paragraph to remove this confusing statement.

Bruno in Columbus 14:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

What do people think about expanding the discussion of paternal effects and moving this page to parental effect? Tim Vickers 17:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm.... is parental effect the best term? Only 10,100 Google hits, as opposed to 240,000 hits for maternal effect and 19,400 hits for paternal effect. Most but by no means all of those seem to be about genetics. I think I'd leave it at maternal effect. (Encouraging that we're top of both of the the last two hit lists.) Andrewa 06:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well Google isn't the best choice to decide on scientific nomenclature. Both maternal and paternal effects are subsets of the larger set of parental effects. Our choices are:

Have separate pages on maternal and paternal effects (closely-related subjects with not enough material to justify this at present)
Rename page to cover both sets of effects with the broader and more general name.

Tim Vickers 14:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We're not deciding scientific nomenclature, that would be original research. We're looking for the current English usage, including of course (and most importantly for this topic) usage in scientific circles, but it's current usage we want, not proposed usage however logical it may seem to us.

So if the page doesn't warrant a split (and I think that to split off a stub to paternal effect would be perfectly OK myself), then it should stay where it is. Andrewa 01:12, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Poor word choice, I mean you can't use the number of Google hits to give an authoritative answer on the correct scientific nomenclature. Google is not a reliable source. The term "parental imprinting" is more widely-used but this is specifically genetic, rather than also including purely environmental influences such as nutrition in the womb. Tim Vickers 02:22, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I'm guessing that you have some expertise in the area, so probably your opinions that parental effect is a good article title and that paternal effect doesn't warrant even a stub are good contributions. But I'd still like some evidence. Andrewa 18:13, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Paternal effects are known, but are very much rarer than maternal effect genes (see introduction of Genetics paper link), so that topic is always going to be a small sub-set of the larger set of parental effects. Tim Vickers 18:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm. So the justification of renaming an article that is principally about maternal effect to a far less common (to the point of at least borderline neologism) term parental effect, depends on the argument that maternal effect is more significant than paternal effect, so therefore paternal effect doesn't deserve an article of its own? Taking that to its logical conclusion, we'd end with only one article in all of Wikipedia. I think this needs a lot more thought. Andrewa 03:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I can see your point. I'm happy enough with a redirect and a sub-section, I don't regard this as ideal, but until more paternal effect genes are discovered it's probably a reasonable compromise. Tim Vickers 15:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]