Foundations of Biomedical Research

Catalog description

This hands-on course teaches students a variety of fundamental skills required to successfully conduct independent biomedical research. The goals of this course include early exposure to important basic biomedical laboratory techniques and developing both written and oral scientific communication skills, with the broader goals of creating a sustainable peer group and fostering rapport with faculty members. The course will be 4 weeks in duration, and consist of hands-on laboratory time, daily literature discussions, a final written report documenting experimental results and data interpretation, and a journal club-style oral presentation. The first week of the course is spent on fundamentals such as searching the literature, using citation indexes, notebooking and basic analytical techniques, as well as exposure to databases manipulating nucleic acid and protein sequences with the goal of enhancing understanding of the experimentation performed in the following 3 weeks of the course. Weeks 2-4 are designed to include an authentic research experience. Rather than having all reagents ready for the students, it is more valuable to perform experiments in "real time." The experimental design consists of the following: 1. Students will purify and identify unknown plasmids by restriction digestion based on plasmid maps created with available software. 2. Students will design and execute a transient transfection with proper controls, and assess the expression of both the plasmids of interest by PCR and their protein products by Western blot analysis. 3. Students will predict which downstream pathways will be altered based on their reading of the primary literature, and assess expression of proteins of interest. Each day will consist of lab assignments and presentations/discussion based on the current scientific literature. This will allow students to develop their own hypotheses that they can then test in a laboratory setting. The course will culminate in an independent report describing the experimental strategies, outcomes, interpretations, and alternative/subsequent hypotheses derived from the lab experience. Students will also give an oral presentation of an article reflecting their own research interests, which will be chosen and prepared in consultation with a faculty advisor.