LabOld

GENERAL LAB SCHEDULE

FYI We will talk about details of each of these modules in lab!

Week of Feb 11th

  • Samaras or Flying Fruits! (Collect and Enter Data in Google Drive,  Download to Excel, Intro to Excel, Descriptive Stats), Brassica or Fast Plants  (Plant seeds)

If you don’t have Excel or Word..download free!

https://wp.stolaf.edu/it/free-software-for-students/

Week of Feb 18th

Week of Feb 25th  

  • Brassica (Count trichomes and Pollinate), Drosophila (Fly training, sorting sexes, set-up crosses), Bacteria (Plan investigation, conduct first assay)

Week of Mar 4th

  • Bacteria (Select and assay), Brassica (Watch plants grow), Drosophila (Clear flies), Samaras (Summary Statistics in R Studio-Preparing for your Research Write-up)

Week of Mar 11th

  • Brassica (Watch plants grow), Drosophila (Score F1, set up crosses for F2), Bacteria (Select and assay)
  • First Practice Research Write-up Due on Friday of this week!

Week of Mar 18th

  • Drosophila (clear bottles of adult flies from cross), Bacteria (Score and analyze and STAIN!), Protist diversity using microscopes

Week of Mar 25th   

  • SPRING BREAK

Week of April 1st

  • Drosophila (score F2 phenotypes from mutant crosses, analyze and discuss phenotype of F2 progeny, determine inheritance), Brassica (Harvest seeds and plant next generation), Bacteria (discuss results-or we may wait to do this)

Week of April 8th

  • Drosophila (finish analysis, evaluate hypotheses, predictions, chi-square analysis), , Bacteria (discuss results, make graphs)

Week of April 15th

  • MEGA (Discuss molecular phylogeny, learn to use MEGA, brainstorm questions, brainstorm Qs), Brassica (Count trichomes and enter data)
  • SECOND  Research Write-up Due on Friday of this week!

Week of April 22nd

  • Brassica (Caculate heritability in R), MEGA (Finalize question, Create tree)

Week of April 29th

Week of May 6th

  • MEGA (Present Posters in Lab), Short Natural Lands Walk after Posters

LAB Assignments

  • A partial “practice” write-up on fruit dispersal data we will generate  (20 pts) (FRIDAY Mar 15th Hard Copy- Under my door by 5pm.)
  • A complete write-up of a second experiment (30 pts) (FRIDAY April 18th Hard Copy-Under my door by 5pm)
  • A group poster at the end of the semester on the Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Lab (30 pts) (DUE LAST DAY OF LAB).
  • Lab Quiz (20 pts) (Will be incorporated into final exam.)

We will talk about each of these assignments in more detail in lab!

RESOURCES FOR BOTH RESEARCH WRITE-UPS (I will add specific instructions for our section here soon.)

Here are NEW instructions/tips for your antibiotic write-up!

Suggested papers for First Write-up

  • Morse and Schmitt (1985) (a useful classic paper for fruit/seed dispersal-although a bit old) Do feel free to cite this in your paper!
  • Hint if you go to Google Scholar or the other library data bases and insert the following key terms you should fine some newer ones “seed size wind dispersal distance

Suggested papers for Second Write-up (papers should be easy to find…this is the one we read in lab so feel free to use it)