20.109(S20): Mini-report

Overview

The culminating written assignment for Module 3 will be relatively informal. You should continue to strive for clear writing and thorough explanations, but you do not have to provide as much context as you did in the previous written assignments. You can assume your reader is highly familiar with your field of study.

Our purpose in asking you to write this mini-report is three-fold:

1. to include some accountability for understanding the M3 material
2. to teach another form of written scientific communication similar
3. to give you one more opportunity to practice your construction and communication of a scientific argument

Logistics

You will complete this assignment in partners.

As you prepare your assignment be sure to review the resources provided on the Communication tab.

Please submit your completed Mini-report on Monday, May 11th by 10 pm to Stellar, with filename TeamColor_LabSection_MR.doc (for example, Green_TR_MR.doc).

Formatting and length guidelines

The entire report text should be about 2 pages, 3 pages at the most, not counting the figures. The figures/captions may be submitted separately.

You should introduce your investigation in 1-2 paragraphs. You can assume familiarity with the scFv yeast display on the part of the reader, and thus provide only a brief description of the general approach then immediately "zoom in" on specific details of the experiment and the question you were trying to address. Be sure to cite relevant publications.

For the remainder of the assignment, summarize and interpret the findings and briefly suggest future work. What was separated as Results and Discussion in the Research article should be combined (as in the Data summary, but with complete sentences). The Methods section will be omitted; however, the figure captions and/or main text should include any methodological details unique to your experiment that are necessary to understand the data shown. Finally, you do not need to write an abstract, but should include a concise and informative title.

Figure(s):

• Alignment of scFv clones to Ab31375
  • Do all DNA mutations result in changes to the protein sequence?
  • If there are changes to the protein sequence, how do you predict they will affect antigen binding?
• Plot of your titration curves
  • What are the dissociation constants of the scFv clones and control Ab14989?
  • Do the data support your hypothesis?

Guiding questions for your discussion:

• What technical changes might you incorporate into the experiment if you were to repeat it? Is there reason to believe that this change would lead to a different result? Why?
• What is the next step given the results of your experiment?

Evaluation

Content	Approximate Worth	Criteria
Background and Approach	25%	Is enough, and only enough, information included to understand the research question and results? Is your strategy to assess the binding of your scFv clone to lysozyme as compared to a control scFv ? Is the hypothesis clearly stated?
Results and Interpretation of Data	50%	Is the description of results complete (including only necessary methods details)? Do the figures clearly convey the data? Are your interpretations of data reasonable?
Contextualizing Results and Suggestions for Future Work	25%	Are suggestions for future experimental changes likely to address any problems encountered? Are high-level suggestions for future work interesting and relevant?

This assignment will be graded by Dr. Leslie McClain.