Incorporating research into a laboratory course

• 1993 - MBB changed its major to expose students to research

• Require all students to do an independent research project

• Needed to develop a course to train students in the basic techniques they would use in the lab

• Introduction to Research (694:315, 447:315, 694:215)

Course Design - Open ended research project

Wanted to avoid cookbook exercises with known outcomes.

Needed the element of discovery

Needed to develop a project with:

1) Experiments that all students could carry out

2) Would give each student different answers

Intro. to Research Project: Analysis of clones from a cDNA Library

Students pick random clones and purify plasmids

SP Primer

XP Primer

200 bp

PvuII

PvuII

719 bpPvuII digests

PCR

Students perform restriction digest and PCR analysis to determine the size of the cDNA insert

Students learn different approaches to the same question

Must deal with discrepancies in the data

Evaluate DNA Sequence Data

Need to make subjective judgments

Conduct Bioinformatic Searches of the International Scientific Databases

Evaluate alignment data

Determine the function of the genes

>200 sequences on NCBI

Students publish their DNA sequences in the databases

Student

Lecture/Lab format on the same day works best

Students go through at least two rounds of each experiment

• Gives the students a chance for success

• Gives the student a chance for failure

• Opportunity to work through a problem - trouble shoot

• Reinforces the concepts and procedures

• Students learn that science often requires repetitive use of a technique to answer different questions.

Need to have experiments well tested

Expect problems

Expensive -

Money - Equipment, reagents, sequencing

Time - Faculty are in the lab, safety, trouble shooting

One to one interactions with the students

Need to revise and update procedures/experiments

Past - Radioactive sequences with high voltage gels

Present - Sequencing services for individual clones

Future - High throughput massively parallel sequencing

Other considerations:

Research in a lecture courseStudents must determine which gene on a clone is involved in a specific biological process (cell cycle, meiosis, replication etc.)

Given short DNA sequences at the ends

Use the genomic databases to determine which genes are on the clone

Examine gene expression, interaction (2-hybrid, co-IP), mutant phenotype public databases

Genomic DNA