One of the most important concepts that any science major will learn is experimental design. This requires someone to be able to think critically and rationally in order to design a well thought out experiment. The basic set up behind a proper experimental design begins first with a question and then a hypothesis based on previous knowledge and literature. The next step involves the development and testing of an experiment that tests the hypothesis. Following the test, data is analyzed, interpreted, and compared to what is already known in order to draw conclusions. Two of the most important parts of an experimental design happen at the end where researchers first speculate future directions to further the research and second share their findings with the rest of the scientific and general communities. Here at Longwood, the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences understand how important it is to shape well informed scientists and therefore incorporates this concept within most courses. For me, some of the most memorable experiments that I have developed on my own or in groups come from my courses in Introduction to Genetics and Cell Biology, Comprehensive Human Anatomy and Physiology I, and Advanced Research in Biology.
Introduction to Genetics and Cell Biology is a course that all biology majors take during their freshmen or sophomore years. Because of this you would expect that all lab projects would be preplanned and screened for complications prior to the students conducting the project. However, in this course while the topic and end goal were the same for everyone, we were challenged to come up with our own questions and experiment designs for a semester long project. This stumped and frightened me at first because I had never been given free rein before. After some thought, I developed a question and experiment to test the effect that water flow had on the bacterial diversity in Prince Edward County, Virginia. I suspected that the slower the flow, the more abundant and diverse the bacteria would be. After data analysis, it was determined that correlation between bacterial abundance and diversity could be not be confidently stated due to the small sample size. Below is my research report for this project which I wrote in the Spring of 2017.
The Effect of water flow on the Bacterial Diversity in Prince Edward County
When I decided to take Comprehensive Human Anatomy and Physiology I I was unsure of how the lab portion would be set up. To my surprise again, we were given a class period to come up with any research project that related to anatomy and physiology that was complex but could also be completed within a semester. At this point in my undergraduate career I had had some experience with developing experiments, so the project quickly came together to investigate the effects that meditation and medication had on ADHD patients. The overall question that I wanted to answer was if meditation could substitute medication since medication sometimes does not work for certain patients. This project was even more challenging that in the previous course because every group was fully on their own to gather and analyze data. While this project had a ton of trial and error moments, we were able to obtain brainwave data and developed an attention test from it. Based on the results, it was determined that our hypotheses could not be supported likely due to our low sample number. Below is my poster that I presented at Longwood University’s Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry in 2019.
The Effects of Meditation and Medication on ADHD Patients
The Advanced Research in Biology course is my undergraduate research that I have been conducting with Dr. Erin Shanle and two other students, Jessica Savas and Ashley Coddington. This project began from an idea that Dr. Shanle had to look at how cancer mutations affected proteins. I took her idea and developed it into my own project to investigate how cancer mutations affect the function of the DNA damage response protein, Mre11. I have grown alongside this project as a scientist from the beginning in 2017 to now in 2020. I remember the first experiment that I conducted was so simple where I exposed yeast to different lengths of UV radiation and counted how many colonies survived. Fast forward to now when I am performing more complex experiments like spotting assays and western blots both of which I helped modify for this projects’ needs. Based on my results, 1 mutation has been seen to have a significant effect on the function and growth of Mre11 and this also confirms that yeast can be used as a model organism to study human diseases. Below is my most recent poster that I have presented at Longwood University’s Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry in 2020.
Using S. cerevisiae to screen cancer mutations in the DNA damage response pathway
As you can see from the courses I have described, Longwood does its best to challenge its students to think critically and develop their own projects. This is important because it allows students to take control and become interested in their learning. Not only that but it allows them to run into issues which develops their problem-solving skills which is a necessity for real world research and jobs.