Gwen's Example - Progress Report

Please refer to the Progress Report guidelines for requirements and formatting instructions (included below).  This is provided as a simple example to illustrate the linking and file location of the course documents.

Here is my progress, results, & discussion.  It includes at least 2 figures with captions and references, if necessary.

Here's a link to the full proposal:  http://aptamerstream.blogspot.com/2011/09/gwens-example-posting-abstract-proposal.html

Thank you,
Gwen Stovall

Progress Report Guidelines:

·         Subheading: Progress, Results and Discussion (3-4 paragraphs, ³ 2 figures) – 30 pts

• All data figures with explanations, figure legends, etc including those that failed.  You should include failed gels and compare them to ones that finally worked.
• Each figure legend should have the target and pool.  Each well of the gel should be labeled with the round#, Wash or Elution sample #, and Cycle #.
• Present and talk about the figures within the text body.  “As seen in Figure 3, the gel was not successful”.
• Avoid nanodrop printouts.  The only useful information is the concentration unless you want to talk about a weird curve or result.
• Describe your data in a story.  Not just X happened, then Z, then Y.  But the round initially worked/didn’t work.  Conditions changed and it began working.  Q was learned through the process.  I want to see how your research understanding matured through the process.
• Each mention of a figure should have a prior paragraph setting up why the data was collected and then a discussion of what useful results were gleaned.  You should address where this data led you (repeat or move on) that should set up why the next set of data was collected.
• If you have a lot of successful gels, then condense them down into one major figure.
• Include a drawing of the page gel with a description of the various bands observed.
• Subheading: Problems Encountered (~1 or 2 paragraphs) – 10 pts
• Organize your achievements with problems you have encountered.  What failed and may require more time.  Be specific with attention to details of the failure and explain what ideas you have to overcome it. 
• Subheading: Conclusion and Future Work (2 paragraphs) – 10 pts
• Summary of main idea and data. 
• If you have done more than one round, provide a table of successful round results such as round number, cycle course, absorbance, quantity of nucleic acid (NA) used for selection, quantity of NA recovered. Include pool, target and name in the legend.
• Explain what you plan to accomplish by the next reporting period (Apr 9 – Apr 23).

Examples

Progress, Results (Data), Discussion is the meat of any progress report.  Since this is on the web, you only need to provide a link back to your Abstract for background information.  I want the body of the post to be the the Results and discussion (DO NOT link to a PDF or document with this information.  Describe your actual data and the story it weaves along with why each step was performed.  You should include 2 figures of your own data and elaborate on the results.  If your gel failed and then a repeated try worked, only include the gel that worked.  If you only have failed gels, include the best gel with no results and explain how many attempts you performed and what you attempted to correct the problem.

For the most part, your data will be either a concentration of RNA after a round, figure of the page gel and agarose gel indicating the cycle course and/or the concentration of your large scale PCR.  Include figure legends describing gels lanes.  In the text comment on what cycle was chosen, concentrations and how much RNA was utilized in subsequent rounds.  If you have many gels, you can stack them listing the round numbers at the right and the PCR cycles across the top. 

Figure 2 PCR gels R7 – R12.  A 3.8% agarose gel was used to separate PCR products from cycle courses for rounds 7 through 12.  Samples were removed from cycles 8 through 16 at two cycle increments.  The orange box represents the cycle for large scale.

Problems encountered.  Nothing works all the time always.  Please explain what problems were encountered and how you over came them, or if they are still a problem.  Band didn’t look quite right, PCR failed, whatever.

Conclusion and Future Work.  Summarize everything you discussed.  This is repetitious but important to collect your thoughts and re-emphasize your main points.  Should be short…one paragraph at most.