For this assignment you will be working together with your team members, design a webposter presenting your hypothesis, data, and conclustions for the yeast microarray experiment. The sections (or pages) of the electronic poster should be organized in a traditional lab report format for presentation of scientific research:  Title and Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion/Conclusions. The advantage of presenting this information on the web is that it will be easier to share our results with others like Dr. Slekar. The following is a list of the new pages that need to be created and some minimum requirements of what should be on each of them. We will be going over more details of how to create this page during class. If this is your first experience creating a web page then I recommend keeping your poster other than the title page very simple.

Title Page:

This is the home page for the e-poster. You may use as many fancy pictures as you would like on this page but make sure they are cited and you have asked permission to use them or that the picutres are your own. Remember to keep the rest of the poster simpler and focused on the content. Instructions will be given in class for how to save this first page into your folder - you will call this page Home.htm. You need to send me a working link to this page for 10 assignment grade points.

Here is an example of a working link from a previous year: http://csmres.jmu.edu/biology/Bio480/Fall10/MolecularMagicians/PlantExp/Home.htm

For your link: Fall10 would need to be replaced with Fall2011, MolecularMagicians with the name of the folder you created in the 2011 folder, PlantExp with the name of the folder you created to put your microarray data and webpage inside.

The title page should include:

• The title of the poster.
• An Abstract of your poster to help Dr. Monre or a new group coming into the class quickly find things that may be helpful to them (please write slide numbers for your microarrays and the color you lableled your mutant RNA on this page)
• Links to each of the other sections of the poster
• All of the authors Names and e-mails.

Introduction Page:

This page is to include an introduction to the project. You should include an introduction to microarrays and the background information about the arabidopsis mutatation used. You should also have a statement about the goal(s) of your microarray experiment. You should spend some time with the literature and cite at least two relevant sources of information that you consulted.

Methods Page(s):

Outline all of the steps used in generating the data which are presented in the Results section. For all of the available protocols you can link to the protocols at the molecular web site (rather than write them all out again) but you also need to put in a sentence or two to help the reader follow what happened in each procedure. Remember though to list deviations from the protocol that you made or choices that were made when we could make these . Please remember to put into your report your slide number(s) you used whether they were yours or not and the colors you used to label the control cDNAs. If you do not have this in the methods. You will be docked half of the points of the report !!!

Any revised protocols you worked out using one of the programs or hints to future classes to especially regarding statistics and data analysis.

 Results Page:

This is the heart and soul of the poster.  What were your results?  Your data should be clearly presented and should tell the story of how you reached your conclusions.  Besides presenting your results in Figures and/or Tables, also describe your results in the text. Refer to all Figure and Tables in order in the text. Figures should be clearly labeled so that someone can fully evaluate the data without you having to explain it to them as they look at it.

At a minimum, you should include:

• A copy of your RNA gel. Mark where the 28S and 18S are minimumally. Mark other bands if you can.
• The concentration and purities of your RNA samples.
• A picture of a portion of your microarray data from the .TIFF file that you gridded
• At least three graphs presenting your green and red pixal data before and after statisticall normalization
• A table of upregulated and downregulated genes indicating what ratios are in all slides examined and gene function
• A table or graph of intermediate exploration done (each group should try to examine the data in a unique way)

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Discussion/ Conclusion Page:

Here are some general questions that should be discussed by everyone.

• Discuss the reason for doing your particular experiment - restate the goal of the experiment
• Discuss the purity and quality of your RNA.
• Discuss the quality of your individual array
• Discuss the results you generated / upregulated/ downregulated genes- are any of them things that Jon should look at further? Do they make sense with the experiment?
• Discuss any problems in the procedures.
• How could this experiment be improved next time?
• What would you do to continue this experiment?

Here is the break down of points and some information about grading the webposters.

• 10 pts. handing in evaluations of four other posters (this is to be done individually not as a team and turned in a week after the posters are due)
• 10 pts will be assigned by your peers to assess individual roles of all team members
• 45 pts of your grade will come from the instructor evaluation of the new poster.
• 45 pts of your grade will come from an average of all peer evlauation of your new poster.
• 10 pts will be given for revisions of any major errors- Revisions must be completed before Thanksgiving Break. Instructor should be e-mailed once revisons are complete.

Please Grade the Following Posters--

For Courses where there are two sections use the following table to determine which posters to grade:

Evaluation criteria ( I will give you a form to fill out to help you in this analysis)

1.You will be asked to rate each new poster on a scale of 1- 45. 

To guide you in your evaluation, here are some things to think about.

Title Page:
Does it communicate accurately the subject of the poster?
Are all the elements there and do the links take you where they should?

Introduction:
Does it introduce the project well?  Does it give enough background to understand the goals of the project?  Does it communicate the goals of the project at all?  Is it well-written and free of grammatical and spelling errors?

Methods:
Can you easily follow what the authors did during this project?  Is there enough detail to let you follow what they did without bogging down in unnecessary details?

Results:
Are the results clearly presented?  Are the figures well-done and clearly-labelled?  Are the authors making claims that their data does not support?

Discussion/Conclusion:
Are the results interpreted well?  Are ambiguous results discussed?  Did the group teach you something new about the data and how to analyze it? Are the conclusions valid?

Presentation:
Is the "poster"  easy to navigate through?  Is the text readable on the computer screen?   Are the web pages neat and attractive? If you asked questions, were they answered clearly?