IMMUNOLOGY LABORATORY

BIO 307

FALL 2008

Instructor:

Dr. Christine White-Ziegler
Office:	Sabin-Reed 457 (enter through SR456 to get to office)
Office phone:	585-3815
E-mail:	cwhitezi@smith.edu (a good way to contact me)
Office hours:	By appointment on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday
Teaching fellow:	Crystal Ziniewicz

Course information:

BIO 307 Immunology Laboratory
Course credit:	1 hour
Class time:	Thursday 1:00-3:50 p.m. with 1 hour to be arranged Arranged hour usually Thursday 4-4:50, occasionally later or at other times
Location:	Sabin-Reed 401
Corequisite:	BIO 306 or permission of instructor

Course objectives:

The primary focus of the laboratory is to learn how immunological techniques are used in clinical diagnosis and as research tools. In the biomedical sciences and health professions, these techniques are highly used and you will need to evaluate data derived using these methods. Through these experiments, students will also gain a greater understanding of how the immune system works against the diversity of pathogens present in our environment.

Scientific writing as well as quantitative and oral presentation skills will be strengthened through a variety of assignments. Scientific writing comes in many forms, in lab notebooks and as laboratory reports. Both are important in your future career as a scientist or health care provider. Lab notebooks give attention to detail, results, and conclusions to allow a reader to replicate and understand the experiment performed. This type of writing is important when performing experiments as a laboratory technician, taking field notes as a scientist at a private company, or writing up notes about a patient. Writing laboratory reports, where the writing is much more formal, replicates the type of writing you would to do to publish a journal article, write a grant proposal, or complete a report for a client. In science, results are always presented orally, whether on rounds, in lab meetings, to a client, or at scientific conferences. The lab presentations at the end of the semester are oral presentations that will allow you to hone your oral presentation skills.

Laboratory text/supplies:

Students should each purchase a lab notebook from the Clark Science Center stockroom in which to write experimental methods and results.

No textbook needs to be purchased for the laboratory class. Readings pertaining to each laboratory exercise will be made available through Moodle. The text for the lecture class, Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease by Charles Janeway and Paul Travers, 7th edition, will also serve as an excellent reference for the lab class. An extremely helpful resource for the scientific writing in this class is A Short Guide to Writing About Biology by Jan Pechnik, 3^rd edition. It is on reserve for the lecture class BIO 306 at the library.

Note: The relevant readings from your textbook for the laboratory are primarily found in Appendix 1 “Immunologists Toolbox”. You will find it helpful to read this chapter ahead of time to have a fuller understanding of the laboratory exercises.

Evaluation:

Attendance and participation (7 x 10 points)	70 points
Pre-lab questions (5 x 10 points)	50 points
Lab notebooks (5 x 20 points)	100 points
Independent project design/independence/participation	30 points
Presentation on independent project	50 points
Total	300 points

Attendance, Participation, and Preparedness:

While some experiments will be completed independently, students will work in groups of 2-4 people to perform a majority of the experiments. It is expected that students will work cooperatively and learn all of the techniques demonstrated in the lab. Attendance and participation in laboratory by each student is mandatory. There will be no makeups for missed labs. If a lab is missed, the student may write up the report for credit using the data collected by her lab partners. However, the student will not receive any points for attendance or participation for that week's exercise.

It is critical that each student read the lab before class (preferably twice!). This is integral to understanding what will happen in the lab and how to get going on the experiments quickly. Past experience has shown that students who are prepared finish these experiments up to an hour faster than their unprepared classmates.

Weekly preparatory questions

Laboratory protocols and preparatory questions will be provided to students by the Monday before the laboratory class. Students should read the lab protocol before lab on Thursday and complete the pre-lab questions prior to lab. These questions are designed to help in the implementation and understanding of the lab to be performed. Students are encouraged to discuss these questions amongst one another any time prior to class. Each student must hand in individual answers to these questions that will be collected at the start of class. Students who have not completed the questions will not be allowed to attend lab that day and will sacrifice both participation and pre-lab question points. Students will need to keep all of the laboratory protocols and bring them to each laboratory class as protocols from previous labs may be referenced.

Lab notebooks:

While in the laboratory, students will record their observations and data in their lab notebooks. For each experiment conducted in class, the following should be included:

1. Title and date- The title should be specific and descriptive of the overall goal of the experiment(s) being performed.

2. Purpose: This section should be a short, 2-3 sentence, complete description of the objective(s) of the experiment. These should be written in your own words, not simply cut out of the lab handout.

3. Methods: The methods can be directly cut out of the lab handout provided and pasted into the notebook. Any changes made to the protocol in the actual performance of the experiment should be noted. This section should be written so that someone else could repeat the experiment by reading your lab notebook.

4. Results: The results should clearly indicate what was performed and include any observations or data collected from the experiment, neatly organized. Analysis of the data (calculations, graphs, etc.) should be included in this section as well. The lab handout will give instructions as to what kind of analyses should be performed. All data should be well labeled for clarity. Brief statements should be made that summarize the results.

5. Conclusions: Your writeup should contain a short statement and/or discussion of results. Also, any limitations or problems that may have affected the outcome of the experiment should be noted. You should also hypothesize about biological reasons that account for the results you obtained.

The intention of the lab notebook is to allow students to gain experience in clearly recording and presenting the results of their experiments. The majority of the writing in the notebook should happen prior to class (Sections 1-3 above) or in class (Sections 4-5 above). Notebooks will be evaluated by the instructor using the criteria above. Please note that not all labs in your notebook will be graded so please check the course outline for details.

Independent project:

Each lab group (1-3 people) will perform an independent project, addressing an unknown question of their choosing. Students will use the techniques they have learned throughout the semester to complete their project. Students will need to submit an independent project idea along with an outline of how the experiment will be performed by the date stated in the course outline. A specific protocol and list of needed materials must be submitted to the instructor a week later as stated in the course outline.

At the end of the semester, each group will be expected to give a presentation detailing their independent project in a lab meeting format. This will be an oral presentation that should include all of the major elements contained in a lab report including an introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion. There is no formal written lab report for the independent project; the lab notebook will be graded on this project.

Late policy: Each assignment is due in lab on the date stated in the syllabus. An assignment handed in late will be penalized 5% of the total points for that assignment for each day it is late.
Outline of course:

*Labs noted with an asterisk will go longer than 3:50 pm so please plan accordingly. Others may go longer depending on preparedness of participants.

Date		Lab description	Written assignments due
9/4		Introduction to course Tour of the lab and safety
9/11	Lab 1	Protein assay
9/18	Lab 2	Cells of the immune system
9/25*	Lab 3	Immunofluorescence	Hand in lab notebook (will grade Lab 1 and 2)
10/2*	Lab 3 Lab 4	Immunofluorescence (cont.) Rapid immunoassays
10/9*	Lab 5	ELISA
10/16*	Lab 6	Western blot
	Start planning independent project
10/23*	Lab 6	Western blot (cont.)	Hand in lab notebook (will grade Lab 3 and 5)
	Submit project design and materials list to instructor by 10/22 (Wednesday in lecture)
10/30	Lab 7	Independent project
11/6		NO LAB (Otelia Cromwell Day)
11/13	Lab 7	Independent project (cont.)
11/20	Lab 7	Independent project (cont.)
11/27		NO LAB (Thanksgiving Recess)
12/4		Project presentations	Hand in lab notebook (will grade Lab 7)