As stated in my first reflection of this section (2.1), one of the most important aspects of scientific research is the ability to share your findings with the scientific and general communities. Almost equally important to sharing your data, is the ability to read and evaluate other scientific literature. As a biology major, it is very important that I know how to effectively read and analyze literature and so reading literature has become a common part of courses. A few examples come from courses such as Sophomore Seminar, Perspectives in Toxicology, and Senior Capstone in Biology.
In Sophomore Seminar, one of the many assignments we were challenged with was to pick a topic, read a bunch of scientific literature, and write up roughly a 10-page paper. This kind of paper is called a literature review in which you search the literature to draw conclusions on your own question. I found this to be very difficult for me to do because I felt as if I was just restating what other people have already said. I didn’t feel like I was adding anything new to the scientific community. It took me a few more semesters to understand the use of literature reviews. With that being said, I choose to write my literature review on the decline of coral reefs and how humans are contributing to it. Based on my research, humans are negatively impacting the health of not only coral reefs but all the organisms that inhabit the reefs by overfishing and contributing to climate change. If drastic actions are not taken to heal the damage, many species will go extinct in the coming years. Below is my literature review that I wrote in the Spring of 2018.
The Decline of Coral Reefs: How Humans are Contributing
My Perspectives in Toxicology course was one of my electives and it was a very interesting and different class compared to the regular biology courses. In this course we discussed countless case studies on toxins and how they affected a time period, the people, and the environment. Towards the end of the course we were then asked to write our own risk assessment based on the knowledge that we had learned from the previous lectures. I found this assignment to be refreshing as it wasn’t a research report or literature review however I did need to read and analyze scientific data. This risk assessment was different from the previous example because instead of focusing on published journal articles, I was challenged with working my way through many databases and collect the data that I felt was important and bring that all together in a report for a specific location. For this project, I was assessing the level of risk that a brownfield in North Carolina had on the surrounding community. I determined that the highest level of risk was only for those persons working or entering the businesses within the brownfield location due to the asbestos and petroleum products contamination. Below is my risk assessment that I wrote in the Fall of 2019.
Another example of analyzing scientific literature can be in the form of a research proposal. This is what I am doing in my Senior Capstone in Biology course. A research proposal consists of a specific aim, literature review, and the proposed methodology and results. For my research proposal, I am looking into the use of bacterial secretion systems in a genetically modified human gut bacterium to produce and secrete insulin in the form of a probiotic pill as an alternative treatment for Diabetes. Through my proposal, I was able to discover that multiple researchers have investigated similar questions and were able to modify bacteria to secrete proteins which could re-stimulate diabetic cells to produce insulin again. I also was able to learn more about the insulin industry and found that insulin prices are drastically increasing which has caused some people to ration their insulin costing them their lives in the process. This research, if it were to continue, could result in a ground breaking alternative to help treat diabetes, however, along with my research, I needed to acknowledge the limitations of this project which could take a lot of time and adjustments as it would need to go through clinical trials before medical use. Below is my proposal project that I wrote in the Spring of 2020.
Therapeutic Intracellular Delivery of Insulin via Bacterial Secretion Systems to Treat Diabetes
The ability to comprehend scientific literature is important and is not only practiced through these kinds of assignments. Many times, courses will allow peer review to take place to give us another reading opportunity as well as get us use to others reading and providing feedback on our work. Peer review is another major process that takes place when research is published to make sure everyone is presenting credible data.