You will be asked write a self-titled essay showing how such experimental techniques can be used in combination with thoughtful experimental design to advance our understanding of how cells work. Your essay should take the following approach:
Strategies to investigate the structure and function of a newly-discovered gene or gene product in the cell.
Your essay will be based on a hypothetical experimental observation where you have noted a change in the observable phenotype of a cell model, which you attribute to a change in a specific gene. This may include a disease model. You then need to formulate the course of action required to determine which protein-coding gene is altered, as well as the mechanism of action of the protein product. You will need to select three different methods to be used in sequence, describe each of these methods, and justify your choice of approach, as well as noting the potential limitations of your choice of methods.
You will need to select a relevant eukaryotic cell model (eg. yeast, cells grown in tissue culture), a specific cell function of your choice (eg. protein trafficking, cell signalling, cell cycle regulation, cytoskeleton, or other), and a particular observable phenotype (eg. change in structure or function of the cell, change in protein levels on a gel etc) of your choice.
You thus have the opportunity to demonstrate a breadth of understanding of the topic, and to take the essay in a direction that interests you the most. Reference to pre-existing work and ‘real’ discoveries is acceptable, and will likely help to support, and/or be used as a context for, your hypothetical case.
You can choose from the many cell biology techniques and experimental approaches mentioned in the module lectures, case studies and resources – and also find your own! It is important to justify your choice of experimental technique at each stage of the hypothetical investigation.
Assessment criteria include: quality of writing, critical thinking, demonstration of knowledge, evidence of library research, and originality.
Essay guidelines:
The structure of the work is that of a standard essay, with an introduction outlining the preliminary observation, following by three separate sections detailing each method and its justification with a logical sequence of ideas, and a conclusion summarizing what you would expect to find and how to take the ideas further.
Your essay must have an original title that summarizes the ideas that you are presenting. For example, a previous year’s essay on autophagy might have used the title, “Eating the enemy within: autophagy in infectious diseases”. In other words, in the quoted example, the student has not used a generic title such as “What is autophagy?”, as this would not have generated a sufficiently interesting angle from which to write.
Your subject-matter must be at the cutting edge of molecular cell biology, and thus should include an appropriate number of references from peer-reviewed journal papers from the last three years.
You are strongly advised to make good use of self-created figures and tables. You should make sure that you tailor these to your own specific requirements, and if they are adapted from published figures or tables, you must acknowledge your sources. Tables and figure legends do not contribute to the overall word-count.
The type of reader you should have in mind is someone already having a good general knowledge of the subject area. Such a person will be hoping for an interesting and original presentation of mostly familiar material. Anything extra will be a bonus. Try to avoid including anything very basic.
You should make a search of the scientific literature for suitable material and use a wide range of appropriate sources; making use of Medline/Pubmed is a good start. Your essay should be fully referenced in Harvard style.
