The only worry I would have is that the middle word would give it away. Maybe remove the intermediate as well so it looks like the old card with the benefit of having the backside show that there is an intermediate
open to disagreement but imo it’s kind of the same thing as showing fumarate and malate and then asking what the enzyme is. it’s fumarase and you see fumarate and they look the same. I’m not sure if it’s worth not showing the intermediate in the text section. Given that in the majority of the images we use in the deck of the TCA this intermediate is not included and its not tested anywhere, I would be worried about it only being included in the extra section here. lmk what you think.
On this topic, we have this image like 50 places in the deck:
Might be worth replacing them all with this:
^^
I also think this graphic should be updated to also indicate which reactions are reversible vs which are not since the single arrows dont show this. Thats pretty easy to do tho and I can just add little arrow tips on the end of the appropriate reactions.
The only reason i say this is because 95% of textbooks/example images dont really include cis-aconitase, and thats for good reason, it only exists as an intermediary between the two.
Image from uworld (although they do have an nice image of acontase when they go in depth it is debatable.
Kaplan shows it and also highlights the structure of cis aconitate.
and the UWorld Question I included for this suggestion directly tests it as the basis of the problem.
I agree that it’s not always shown in the large overview images but 2/3 of the primary sources discuss it and UWorld tested it. Given that the TCA is HY it also seems like it doesnt make sense to skimp on these kinds of details when it’s only 9 steps total.
@Brian_BH what’s your thoughts
Dunno if I have any strong feelings here.
Can function as a bit of a spoiler. That’s not always entirely avoidable, given naming conventions. But, it does reduce the barrier to recall for the card considerably.
Is mentioned in textbook/s, though isn’t super high-yield in and of itself. Citric acid cycle itself is high yield, though also arguably already lots of cards there too.
I do wonder a bit about the wisdom of just sort of randomly changing the image on users overnight to include an intermediate that wasn’t previously there. It’s one thing to do so for an inarguably critical detail, of course.
I don’t know that I land anywhere firm on it
Thats fair. I’m a little concerned about not including it but if you guys both think it doesn’t belong I understand. If we aren’t going to test it directly, I think we should at least update the graphic to include it like I did above so at least its shown every time someone answers a card with that graphic in the extra section.
If you mean replacing the image in the Extra section, I guess my first concern with that is, since the image in the Text field will no longer match the image in the Extra field, and it’s one of those ‘fill-in-the-blank’ style images, is that not a bit unintuitive? To have one image in one field, then ‘fill in the blank’ per a totally separate image in the Extra field?
Imo this exemplifies a detail that, if we want to capture, is one that would be best wrested down the line by adding a couple of cards that cover important/necessary/noteworthy intermediates. There aren’t a ton of reactions for which one needs to know the intermediates, but there are a couple of notables for sure.
But even then, the name of the game is really high-yield info, and this may or may not qualify as high-yield really. One can debate the merits and importance of its inclusion, but it’s tough to consider it a pivotal detail.
That being said, I’m not opposed to the idea of adding the image to the bottom with a little addendum noting something to the effect of ‘this reaction is bi-directional and includes the intermediate XXXX’.
It not being very high-yield puts us in a tough spot. There’s no way the deck will ever cover every conceivably testable detail and we have to be at least somewhat judicious about how much we throw at the wall. At the risk of making the point via exaggeration, at some point we run the risk of being an encyclopedia, etc., etc.
There’s just no way we’ll cover every detail of every question out there; that can’t be the goal for the simple fact that 1. we’d never accomplish it, and 2. we’d bloat the deck to suffering trying to get there. Important to keep in mind the basic reference frame of utility versus exhaustiveness. We want utility, for sure. We are not trying to create a fully exhaustive resource.
I dont think replacing the first image in the extra section but maybe including the updated full TCA overview I made above in this thread with the cis aconitate intermediate included. We currently have varying graphics in several cards for the citric acid cycle. Many not including cis aconitate and several including it.
*including the TCA overview below the previous graphic