I agree. In my opinion, this should be a change made to all of the metabolism cards. It never made sense to me why there should be a cloze for the substrate and product when they are in the picture. I think there should be a card exactly how you suggested where you have to know all of the reactants and products based on the enzyme shown. Then another showing the reactants and products and having to know the enzyme. I also always thought that the picture in the extra section should include the structures of the substrate and product which is lower yield but something Iāve definitely been tested on. If itās in the extra section, it gives people the choice of whether they want to memorize the chemical structures as a part of answering the card.
These old images have been a sore spot for some time. Weāve just never had anyone, or any time, to tackle and update them all to avoid unnecessary cueing/hints
@Brian_BH I wouldnāt mind revamping/remaking the images for the pathways.
I saw at some point there was some discussion of using image occlusion cards for the pathways:
I prefer image occlusion for my personal cards on the pathways but itās a pretty big change. Is that why it ultimately failed even though it had some initial support it looks like?
It failed in part because the original suggestions came in sort of piecemeal during a time when we had basically no one on the team to tackle them. So it just became one of those nice-to-haveās that there wasnāt bandwidth for (and, admittedly, Iām not super handy in the graphic design department)
Image Occlusion is unlikely to work in this case just because it would require creating a whole new note (we canāt take a cloze-deletion note and convert it to an ImageOcclusion note once itās already uploaded, for various reason). So the image/s itself would have to be doctored.
Makes sense. Iāll work on it throughout the next few days. What would you like to see be different? I personally think that the structures for the primary reactant and product should be included in the image in the extra section with the full step written out (substrate, cofactors, products). Do you think blanking/boxing out the cofactors individually is too much of a hint? For example if you see isocitrate to a-ketoglutarate and 3 blank cofactors for NAD+, NADH, and CO2? I personally think that when I was initially memorizing these pathways having the number of blank boxes on the image gave me too much of a hint/forced me to recall something that I initially would not. As a result, I would have āpassedā the card but I really should have failed it. Also, do you think that the entire pathway should be written out step by step? Or maybe using an image like we already have (linked below) and boxing out the reactants, cofactors, and products for that step?
The image in the extra field should, ideally, be the āunadulteratedā form that contains anything that was blanked out in the version of the image in the text field (essentially, it should serve as a visual āanswerā as well as a reference visual).
Having structure might be nice, and wouldnāt likely do much harm, provided that the image itself doesnāt become overly cluttered or busy (and, preferably, that it looks presentable enough). Structure/s of the intermediates is one of those things that is testable, though itās debatable exactly how high yield it is.
As far as the number of clozes, itās a bit tougher. On one hand the number of clozes does function unavoidably as a kind of hint. On the other hand, without that you likely end up in a position of having to cue what the response should include (is it only, say, malate as reactant and oxaloacetate as product, or should it also include NAD+ and NADH? What about the steps that donāt have those things?). I think thereās an argument to be made that blank-walling the cloze, lacking a cue, runs the risk of making the individual cards too challenging (though, admittedly, this probably falls into a judgement value thatās going to be difficult to make a firm claim about one way or the other, as weāre all biased about what we perceive to be hard relatively to, say, an āaverageā MCAT-taker).
I havenāt meditated on it at length, but I donāt see an immediate solution that doesnāt sort of trade some issues for others. Ultimately this is one those famous concepts/fields (Krebs, etc.) where it really needs to be tested from multiple angles (zoomed in, zoomed out, etc.) and I donāt know that I really expect any one card to fully capture the whole thing. At least personally, these cards functioned as nice āstep checksā and I ended up having to memorize a birdās eye view as well, just to wrap my head around it entirely.
In that vein of thought, maybe this concept is a good candidate for consideration of a new note that captures the whole thing, or a note that tests which steps require NAD+, or whatever. Thatās certainly one of those things thatās laborious to memorize but Iāve lost track of how many times I saw it come up on a question.
For sure couldnāt hurt to include Aimanās image in there; itās very nice to look at and deserves a bit more airtime, imo.
That being said, if you have bright ideas or can see the card from an angle Iām not considering, Iām certainly open to ideas.
@Brian_BH What about something like this (maybe a little busy looking but tough to make it any less)? In my opinion, it looks cleaner than the current graphic for the card.
Front:
The above reaction is from the citric acid cycle.
This reaction requires {{c1::Ī±-ketoglutarate}}, {{c1::NAD+}}, and {{c1::CoA}} and produces {{c1::succinyl CoA}}, {{c1::NADH}}, {{c1::H+}}, and {{c1::CO2}}.
Extra:
Tests people on all the current stuff in the clozes while allowing them to decide whether or not they memorize the structures as well.
Looks way nicer than the existing image (also, mercifully, is horizontal which will conserve screen real estate; one of my (many) gripes about the old image and its formatting).
Is that something you drew up, or is it something we need to source-cite?
I made it and am happy to make them for the existing metabolism cards like this one in the deck if you think that makes sense. Thereās not really much consistency between them right now and I think they can all be improved. It takes a little bit of time to make them though so itāll probably be over the course of the next few days/week. Iāll add the whole Anking llc thing and submit this as a new suggestion if you think itās good to go.
For sure. Thereās no rush (itās one of those things thatās been sidelined for longer than Iāve been a maintainer, to be sure). I suspect they were either cobbled together, or haphazardly made, or both at some point in the distant past.
Itās got a yea vote from me. 
Great. Just submitted!
Just in terms of what pathways to address first, the current TCA and glycolysis images work well enough. I think that the B-oxidation and particularly the fatty acid synthesis images and content need a major overhaul. I donāt really think that these cards accomplish covering the pathways. They donāt test directly on reactants, cofactors, products, or enzymes. These pathways maybe arenāt as high yield as glycolysis or TCA but they are something we need to know from my understanding. As of now, the cards only loosely test what occurs during each step, ie. āattachā ācondenseā āreduceā ādehydrateā and āreduceā with no mention of what this relates to. Whatās your thoughts on these cards?
Lolol, so much of the images could fairly be described as needing a āmajor overhaulā tbh. The options for large-scale changes here are about the same as they are for the rest of the deck, atm. Which is to say: not.
Itās a tough spot, because an ideal framing would be to sit in a room and just overhaul it all from scratch. But thatās not feasible, at least on any short-term timeline, for multiple reasons (some of which weāve discussed previously, but the short version is that large-scale changes to the deck are not currently on the table).
Our current options are more or less as follows:
- Minimum: clean up images.
- Moderate: clean up images, tweak cards what little bit we can within existing framework/s.
- Moderate+: clean up images, tweak cards, see about identifying true gaps and framing a short-list of new cards as candidates for inclusion (to cover high-priority gaps).
- Probably pipedream, atm: overhaul the whole thing, delete a bunch of stuff, rebuild from scratch.
In terms of adding any real appreciable new cards, my plan is more or less thus: finish tagging all the existing UWorld textbooks (so I have a demonstrable and payable deliverable with proof-of-concept that material projects and improvements are both happening, and possible) and use this progress to leverage arguments in favor of at least slightly opening the door for more latitude on my end to green-light other projects under my direction/leadership (presuming I will have built enough trust and goodwill to drive the car a bit, as it were).
Iām going to broach this by being like āhey, hereās a major content win (UWorld tagging); relatedly, there are XYZ number bolded terms in the UWorld textbooks that arenāt covered at allā and float the idea of including some of them. From there, Iāll get a sense of what the appetite is, how open they are, and how much wiggle room I can get. Until those conversations take place, which are weeks or months away, any propositions for large-scale changes are in a holding pattern.
Some of this also hinges on a few other things; the deck is growing and Iād like to show them that we have the basics in place: a few maintainers, some demonstrable improvements to the deck, some deliverables, and some modest plans for improvement. If I can get some green light then that opens a lot of windows. But for sure, any large-scale changes are not going to get approval right now, or likely until we can prove a bit of a portfolio and show that the deck is in sufficiently good hands that editorialization is merited. Which, atm, we have nothing to deliver, and no portfolio to present beyond, just, the deck hasnāt caught fire and burned down.
Itās also worth keeping in mind that Ankihub has limited resources, and the MCAT deck is not the biggest priority. The shortest path to being able to drive the car is showing them that itās being driven well, the drivers are sober and can be trusted, and presenting evidence to that fact. Otherwise, itās entirely too likely to get a aināt-broke-donāt-fix it mentality to a deck thatās already quadrupled in subscriber size in the last 6 or so months and that, by all indications, is doing fine driving itself.
So:
- Minimum: actionable now.
- Moderate: actionable now.
- Moderate+: probably not actionable now; odds are low but not impossible.
- Probably pipedream, atm: definitely not now, indeterminate odds in the medium term, maybe never (?).
TL; DR: my honest assessment of the highest-likelihood path forward is to take 2-4 months, cobble together and catalog some demonstrable improvements, offer this up as evidence for why there should be some room in the driverās seat. The more we have to show for that pitch, the better the odds they go āyeah, you know what? Sure why notā and weāre off to the races.
Until that conversation takes place, adding and deleting are explicitly not on the table as a standing policy.
That plan makes a lot of sense. Longterm I really believe the best answer to the metabolic pathway cards is largely rebuild from scratch. Probably would be easier at this point than trying to tweak them. That being said, I think at the very least, these images should be modified to include a lot more info. For example for fatty acid synthesis:
Iām thinking a structure and name for each reactant/product if I can manage to not make it look insanely busy. These steps/arrows arenāt really meaningful at all without knowing what comes between them. I donāt think the whole āreduceā thing is meaningful or the whole NADPH reduces C=O to C-OH thing in the extra section means much without knowing what this actually applies to. I also think I would include the enzyme for these steps. If we canāt force a new card/cloze to the deck this at least makes the attempt at showing the user the actual relevant info every time they see the card. What do you think?
Improving the current images, imo, is win-win-win, for a few reasons:
Itās not insanely hard.
It creates no conflicts.
Theyāre visually much more pleasing, and people like them (itās also just, arguably, easier on the eyes).
We can include them in update posts, advertising the deck.
Itās a very easy, straightforward, bit of evidence to be like ālook, the deck is in good hands. Now lemme do mooorreeeā and alongside other improvements, imo, builds the case that the deck is just straightforwardly in good hands which very much plays to the benefit of hatching larger, more comprehensive, plans further down the road.
Great. Iāll try to come up with something that fits the clozes and accomplishes this.