Apart of BIOL342 was designing an experiment on protein aggregation where the students had to investigate the impact of reduction stress, heat stress and protein concentration on the aggregation of protein.
Before BIOL342, I had never designed an experiment and wasn’t sure what to do because I had always followed the methods that were provided. However, the staff and tutors explained the experiment in detail and even provided a flowchart example of how to design one of the parts of the project. The details include the equipment provided and the different parts of the experiment. Thanks to these details and past UOW experiments I was able to come up with a method for the experiment that included a hypothesis, experimental controls, concentration calculations and a step-by-step guide (Figure 6).
On the day the experiment was performed we were given a method for the experiment. I compared the provided method with my own and found many similarities such as the experimental controls and few differences such as the concentration and volume of samples. I was able to manage my time and perform all parts of the experiment effectively. This has shown that I know the basics on designing and executing lab experiments. These skills will be helpful if I do a research project again in the future.
Figure 6: Extract of methods (hypothesis, controls, calculations) created for Project 1: Protein Aggregation. Methods were written for the three parts of the experiment and displayed in an eNotebook on LabArchives.
BIOL342 ePortfolio 