Reading Primary Literature in Intro Bio

1. Reading Primary Literature in Intro Bio Anne Casper Eastern Michigan University

2. Lab Report Assignments for our Intro Bio students

3. Writing Assessment Rubric

4. Writing Assessment Rubric * Primary literature: peer-reviewed publications of original research in scholarly journals * Secondary literature: peer-reviewed literature reviews published in scholarly journals * Tertiary literature: text books, internet sites, articles written for a general audience etc.

5. Writing Assessment Rubric

6. Writing Assessment Rubric

8. How are we introducing our students to the primary literature?

9. My goals for reading primary lit in Intro Bio I • Reinforce concepts from lecture and lab activities • 2. Demonstrate how concepts from class are applied by research scientists • 3. Increase students’ awareness of how research is conducted • 4. Increase students’ ability to read and understand primary literature • 5. Increase students’ ability to integrate information from primary literature in their lab reports

10. Start with “How to Read a Scientific Paper” http://www.lib.purdue.edu/phys/inst/scipaper.html

12. General Questions • Is this article primary scientific literature or secondary scientific literature? How do you know? • At first, it may look like this article does not begin with an abstract. But, there actually *is* one – where is this article’s abstract? • What is the name of the journal in which this article was published? In what year was the article published? • Where is the research laboratory where the first author of this article works? (Hint: Look at the end of the article to find this information.) • 5. Where did the authors get the money to support the research in this article?

13. Questions on the Introduction 8. Two research groups recently reported what causes HPGS. a. HGPS is caused by mutations in what gene? b. In what year did these two groups publish their discovery? c. What journals did these two groups publish their papers in?

14. Questions on the Introduction 9. On the inner surface of the membrane surrounding the nucleus, there is a meshwork of intermediate filaments. This meshwork, called the nuclear lamina, provides structural support to the nuclear membrane, and is involved in breakdown and reformation of the nuclear membrane during cell division. a. What are the three main components of the nuclear lamina? b. Lamin A and Lamin C are both encoded by the same gene. How is it possible for two different proteins to be made from the same gene?

15. Questions on the Introduction • Based on the results of the two previous papers about HGPS, does this disease have an autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance? • If there have already been two articles published on what causes HGPS, why did the authors think it was important to publish this article, since it’s also on the same topic?

16. Questions on the Results Look at the “Carrier” sequence results. Why does the carrier have one peak in the sequencing read that is overlapping both blue and yellow?

17. Questions on the Results The results of AluI digest of PCR products from particular individuals is shown in Figure 1C. Look carefully at the result for individual IV-5. Based on this result, what is the genotype of this individual?

18. Questions for you… • What are your goals for having Intro Bio students read primary literature? • How did you select papers for students to read? (I spent a long time finding accessible ones….) • How have you structured lab or class time for students to read the articles? • - How have you assessed the success of achieving your goals for students?