BIOL398-01/S10:Class Journal Week 13

For this last Class Journal, please reflect on this class as a whole.

• What was the most important thing that you learned this semester that you think will stay with you a year from now?
• Please share anything else you'd like to say about the class.

Alex George

1. Learning how to analyze and interpret data in different ways was probably the most important thing I took from this class. It is interesting to see the ways data can be analyzed (and almost manipulated) to make it fit what you want to happen. I will look at scientific papers more critically from now on and not just be willing to accept results. With that in mind, this class helped me realize the amount of work and time that goes into creating an experiment and finding useful results.
2. As for the class, I don't know how crazy I am about everything being online. It definitely makes finding assignments easier and sharing information easier, but I guess I am 'old school' in the sense that I like using pen and paper.

Alex J. George 02:54, 23 April 2010 (EDT)

KP Ramirez

• The most important thing I learned this semester was how to properly interpret and understand DNA microarray research and more effectively how to present my findings knowledgeably. This included learning how to best structure presentations and allocating how much time is spent interpreting tables and structures in a formal presentations.

• This was an interesting course to take, even though the university structures it as a Lab to correspond with Biological Databases, in some ways it felt more like a follow up to that course and expanded considerably as far as presenting your findings. This semesters presentations were much more precise and structured then the ones I completed last semester. However, there were also some downsides as well. Having a public OpenWetWare wiki had issues, such as not being able to post all of the files that we wanted, and thus relying on lionshare. However, besides that issue this wiki was similar to last semesters and worked effectively as a way to quickly be able to maintain the data being worked on. As a whole this was a successful followup to Biological databases.

KP Ramriez 05:26 April 25 Individual week 13

Michael Piña

1. This project was essentially the culmination of the lab. We took all of the tools and techniques we've learned and used throughout the semester and applied our own knowledge of Biology to interpret our findings and suggest possible reasons for our results.

2. I believe that this week gave some true insight on what it means to be a scientist; the data isn't always clear cut and there is a lot of room for interpretation.

3. I find many of the Gene Ontology terms to be very vague, so it was somewhat difficult to interpret our results. Overall I think that this project put everything in to perspective so there wasn't really anything else that I'm unsure of or didn't understand.

Individual Week 13 Michael R. Pina 00:38, 26 April 2010 (EDT)

Ryan Willhite

1. What was the purpose of this assignment? The purpose of this assignment was to utilize GenMAPP as well as MAPPFinder to help organize data, filter, and overall make sense our information for analysis. Through this process color sets were created in order to highlight areas of increase and decrease and find terms that help further our reasoning as to why these genes were induced or repressed.
2. What did I learn from this assignment (head, hands, heart)? I learned a lot through this process. It was not easy and needed more explanation but I eventually understood the reasoning for this process. These programs are used to help organize and filter data and acquire more knowledge as to why certain genes are induced or repressed during the cell wall biosynthesis according to our study on Staphylococcus aureus. Cell wall biosynthesis has a pathway that in a lot of ways can disrupted and can cause inhibition using antibiotics etc. but what is interesting is the information gathered about the genes that help theses processes occur. Filtering and finding these terms that related to our data were the most interesting part mainly because it allowed us to be creative and ask why is this happening? It also allowed us to do a bit of research and say to ourselves if i was a cell why would I induce or reduce this particular gene. It was really a great learning experience and I learned quite a bit. I also learned that it is not only helpful in our study but any study involving microarray analysis that can assist in our many questions about disease, etc.
3. What did I not understand (yet) about this assignment? I still do not quite understand the 10 go terms versus the top ten terms based on increase/decrease and why they differ.

Ryan N. Willhite 16:15, 25 April 2010 (EDT)

• Week 13 Assignment Page

• Week 13 Journal