LABORATORY SCHEDULE 

        Lab Number            Date                                      Topic  

1.                     Sept 4                           The nature of science/ Probability 

2.                     Sept 11                         Yeast crosses 

3.                     Sept 18                         Yeast crosses continued 

4.                     Sept 25                         Drosophila dihybrid crosses 

5.                     Oct 2                            Drosophila linkage mapping 

6.                     Oct 9                            Finish work on Drosophlia 

7.                     Oct 16                          Bioinfomatics  

            8.                     Oct 23                          Quantitative inheritance: Novelty seeking behavior 

            9.                     Oct 30                          Standard Curves  

            10.                    Nov 6                           Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) 

            11.                    Nov 13                          PCR Cont/Seeds of Dissention  

            12.                    Nov 20                          Lab presentations 

            13.                    Dec 4                            Lab presentations 

 

Most labs are designed to fit into the scheduled lab period, but because we are using living organisms that take time to grow and reproduce, you will sometimes need to return to lab outside the scheduled lab period. This is unfortunate, but is the nature of the work done in the discipline. Some of the out-of-class work time will be offset by labs that are very short or may just require a few initial observations. We consider the lab to be an essential component of the course. The grade in the lab, which makes up 21% of your final grade in the course is made up of:

 

                        Weekly Lab Reports                               15%

                        Paper and Presentation                           5%

                                                                                    Total 21%

 

In addition to lab reports, there will be weekly quizzes at the beginning of the lab period. The quizzes will be on material from the previous week's lab as well as the current week's lab. Lab reports on completed labs are to be turned in at the beginning of the next week's lab, late assignments will be penalized. These lab reports need not be overly elaborate, but must be typed and take the following format: 

                                                Purpose and Hypothesis

                                                Brief Methods

                                                Results and Discussion

                                                Conclusion and/or Answers to Questions 

Lab Paper/Presentation 

For part of your lab grade, you will be required to write a paper and give a PowerPoint Presentation of your paper topic to your lab group. Select an application of genetic technology of interest to you that has been exploited in some practical way to affect agriculture, medicine, forensics, drug design, or genetic testing or screening, and write a short paper explaining that application. For example, you might be interested in prenatal genetic testing.  

Your paper would explain the rationale behind the technology (that is, the genetic principles it relies on), the technical procedure itself, and how researchers are putting the results to use in prenatal testing. Or, you might have an interest in how genetics may allow precise design or prescription of new pharmaceuticals. In this case, you would explain how corporate drug labs make use of fundamental genetic principles. (I will approve topics before you begin work.) You also will present what you have learned to your classmates in a 10-minute mini-lecture. HSC has an excellent resource for giving presentations at the Speaking Center, website: http://people.hsc.edu/faculty-staff/cdeal/. The topics you have chosen for your presentation must be OK'ed by your instructor.

           

Format: Each paper should include the following information in no more than four typed pages (double-spaced; one-inch margins; and 11-point type):

 

(a) several paragraphs introducing the technical application of genetics that is being explored and why you are interested in it;

 

(b) a concise description of the genetic concepts that the technology depends on (e.g., meiotic segregation, genetic variation, specificity, protein structure, etc.);

 

(c) a brief summary of the technology itself and how it is applied, in your own words; and

 

(d) a list of alphabetized References (this can be a fifth page) that you used when conducting your library research using the following citation style, which is commonly used in scientific writing (note italics, punctuation): 

 

For books: Author last name, first name, initial. Copyright year. Book title. Publisher: Place of publication.

For journals: Author last name, first name, initial. Copyright year. “Title of article.” Journal name, volume number (issue number, if applicable): page numbers. In text citation should be of the following form (Devlin, 2003). 

-Written papers are due at the same time you are scheduled to make your presentation. Late papers will lose 25% per day, beginning at the time due. Presentation should take the form of mini-lectures using PowerPoint, where you explain your technology and the genetic ideas fundamental to it. Each presentation should be 10 minutes, with another few minutes for questions.