BIOL368/F16:Class Journal Week 8

Will Fuchs

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding the your journal club article?
   • The rhetoric was formal and very scientific which always challenges me, but I need that feeling otherwise I can't grow as a reader, additionally they kept each point rather concise although it was a rather dense and extremely technical article. The organization of the paper was particularly clear and well presented and had no redundancies.
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • I felt the most difficult aspect was the degree of specialized knowledge and unfamiliar terms that was implemented throughout the paper. This made the read very slow and tedious given that I felt as if I was continually looking up new terms and processes that were presented frequently. My lack of previous technical knowledge slowed down my ability to digest the paper.
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?
   • The sub-type covered in this study was one of the less focused on in the U.S. so what makes the strains so different from each other? Is it solely genetic or do phenotypes play a role?

William P Fuchs 00:40, 24 October 2016 (EDT)

Avery Vernon-Moore

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • I think the easiest aspect is creating an outline based off of the article. I appreciate that scientific articles/study have section headings which makes it much easier for me to follow and to break up and digest sections of the reading. I think it helps in such a difficult assignment that we now have some background knowledge on the subject.
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • In general I still have a hard time fully grasping their findings and really understanding what it is that was discovered. Even though we have been working with HIV for a few weeks it still is a lot to comprehend.
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?
   • I think since my groups article focuses specifically on subtype C and neutralizing antibodies, I want to know if all the subtypes would be affected in the same signature sequences of the env gene, or if they develop significantly different within the body. I think I am just more interested to learn about the different subtypes of HIV-1 in general.

Avery Vernon-Moore 01:18, 19 October 2016 (EDT)

Zach Goldstein

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • The easiest aspect of reading my article was understanding the conclusions of the research and how it can be applied to anti-AIDS drugs. This was easy because well, firstly the language used was less technical than in other sections, and secondly the conclusions made sense based on things we have already learned about in HIV-1 progression and treatment.
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • The most difficult aspect of reading this article was understanding the methods. The majority of this paper centered around making a good model of the V3 region of the gene. A lot of different programs were used in the creation of it, new analytical techniques were used, and I can safely say I still don't fully understand how they did it, although I get the general idea.
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?
   • As discussed before, I would really like to see how these potential drugs would work to treat HIV/prevent AIDS. This article gets closer to answering that question but how exactly could we manufacture drugs that target the "rigid" secondary structures, and exactly how would they prevent progression of the virus. I would also like to know more about the subtypes and the differences between them. Is it only a genetic difference? Do they progress at different rates? Is one more susceptible to treatment by antibiotics?

Zachary T. Goldstein 02:39, 20 October 2016 (EDT)Zachary T. Goldstein

Matthew K. Oki

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding the your journal club article?
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?

Courtney L. Merriam

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • The easiest part of the journal reading was the fact that it is compartmentalized into different sections. The article as a whole is very complex, and includes several difficult to understand words that need to be looked up. When the article is broken down, I can work on understanding a sentence, then paragraph, then a section at a time. Then I can comprehend a sort of synopsis of the section, and eventually the article itself. Once I have a general idea, it’s easier to get into the more specific details with a wider context. I’ve found that this is the easiest way to understand complex topics.
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • The most difficult and tedious part of the article was having to decipher all the subject specific words and terminologies that experts use so colloquially. The article is so ridden with these words that I’d have to stop every sentence or so to look up words or at least try to consider the context or a term or phrase. Some sections were very dense with things I didn’t understand, especially the methods section, with different programs and techniques being mentioned that I have yet to be acquainted with.
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?
   • We’ve been focusing a lot of subtype C, and this article is centralizing around subtype C as well. So I would like to learn more about other subtypes, and also if there is a mechanism by which a neutralizing antibody could be synthesized to neutralize every subtype. I don’t yet know enough about the genetic differences between the subtypes to be able to tell if that’s feasible or not.

• Courtney L. Merriam 18:29, 22 October 2016 (EDT):

==Mia Huddleston

1. What was the easiest aspect of reading/understanding the your journal club article?
   • The easiest part for me was when the article referenced termeology and concepts that I learned in my immunology class. This article did relate quite well to what we are currently learning in that class such as chemokines which helped me understand the article much better.
2. What was the most difficult aspect of reading/understanding your journal club article?
   • This paper also referenced a lot of terminology and methods that I didn't know anything about. The methods section was extremely difficult to understand because of all of the programs they used.
3. What new questions do you have about HIV that you would like to answer?
   • Since our topic was based on finding a way to help with anti-AIDS drugs, I'm really interested in the most current research and what seems to be working as an anti-AIDS drug.

Mia Huddleston 18:15, 24 October 2016 (EDT)