Tools for Research

Catalog description

The goal of this course is to provide a thorough and comprehensive review of current laboratory technology essential to research in molecular medicine, focusing on basic underlying principles, important controls and caveats. The students will clone a cytokine during a laboratory component of the course, which will involve designing appropriate primers, obtaining RNA from cytokine-expressing cells, performing RT/PCR, and ligating isolated, characterized fragments into cloning- and expression vectors, followed by transfection into mammalian cells. Additional bench work will include characterizing the cloned product using real time PCR, ELISA, western blot analysis, and immunohistochemistry. One week of the course will also be devoted to learning flow cytometry, taught by the director of the Flow Cytometry Core. Seminars on commonly used molecular techniques will be given intermittently by guest lecturers with the relevant expertise. Evaluation will be based on the student's lab techniques, class participation, and contribution to the group learning process.