Design An Experiment/Genetics

Design an Experiment and Present it Visually

The objective of this assignment is for you to be a little creative and apply the knowledge that you have gained throughout the semester to your own experimental design. The goal of the experiment that you design is to identify a gene that helps produce a trait in an organism of your choice.

At the end of this discussion students will be able to:

Design an experiment linking genes with the traits they affect
Visually present their designs
Briefly summarize their ideas

For this assignment, you will present a visual display of your experimental design. This could be hand-drawn/colored (and you take a picture to submit it), or completed in a computer drawing program, PowerPoint, infographic program. Note many of these programs have starting templates (like PowerPoint’s “timelines”) to make it easier. Use the format that is most comfortable to you.

Instructions:

Review the grading rubric for your visual presentation (it includes the group discussion rubric)
Rubric Experimental_Design_and_Discussion.xlsx
Prepare your experimental design (it might help to organize it with an outline)
Choose your organism and the trait that you would like to study
Determine your motivation for choosing this organism and trait
Determine why it is important to work on this organism/trait combination
Choose your methods – make sure you know what kind of data each method will produce and how it will be used in the next step of the experiment (hint: review the Animal Genetic Simulation, especially theory and the modules for methods)
Make a rough draft of your visual presentation. Sometimes it is helpful to draw it out on paper even if you are planning to use a computer program
Review your organization and make any changes necessary before refining your final draft
Complete your final draft
Write a short summary (200-300 words) of your experimental design.
Submit to your Discussion Group and follow the prompts for your Final discussion