Nothing demonstrates your deep understanding of a biological problem as effectively as being able to formulate a hypothesis and an experimental plan to test it…
Doing research is not nearly as difficult as deciding what research should be done !!
That is why I’ve created this opportunity for you to further practice that skill.
Your proposed research should fit reasonably within the range of topics covered in BIOL 360. Please talk to me well in advance from submitting your assignment, to make sure that you’re on the right track. Inevitably, every semester I have students complain that they didn’t get enough extra-credit for their assignment – and in 100% of those cases the problem was that the student never approached me to discuss their ideas in advance. So, the first step in this assignment is to discuss informally with me your idea.
Your proposal will follow the following standard format:
-Brief description of background / preliminary information. What is the unanswered question that you are
trying to address with your research? And what is the bigger picture where it fits? What might be the significance of your findings (e.g. might they contribute to detecting or curing a disease, improve crop or biofuel yields, improve an existing technology or experimental approach)?
-Brief description of the experimental system / approach that you propose to use, and formulation of a specific hypothesis. Do not worry about technical details while describing your approach; you only need to briefly justify the proposed experimental strategy. For instance, you do not need to say “cells will be lysed by incubation on ice in RIPA buffer with 0.1% SDS, followed by boiling for 10 minutes, centrifugation at 14,000g for 20 minutes at 4C, PAGE and Western Blotting using a 1:200 dilution of anti-XYZ antibody from Big Co. (cat # 1234)”. A simpler “I would then investigate if cells express protein XYZ” will work.
-Brief description of the anticipated results. What do you expect to see in your results if your hypothesis is correct?
-Brief discussion of potential caveats and alternative approaches. Think what might potentially go wrong, and think about technical alternatives. For example “In the case that protein XYZ could not be reliably detected with antibodies, I will also measure changes to the XYZ mRNA levels in the cell by quantitative RT-PCR”.