BIO 329: GENETICS LAB

FALL 2009

http://www.biology.buffalo.edu/courses/bio329/

2 Credits

Instructor: Dr. Margaret Hollingsworth
Hochstetter 653 
hollings@buffalo.edu
Office Hours:  MWF 11-noon

Lab location: Hochstetter 212

Text: The lab manual is for sale at the copy shop in the Commons
Bring your lab manual to every lab session, including the first.

LAB SCHEDULE
Monday	12:00 - 4:00
Tuesday	1:00 - 5:00
Tuesday eve	6:00 - 10:00pm
Wednesday	1:00 - 5:00
Thursday	12:30 - 4:30

       The lab schedule can be found on the calendar in your lab notebook.
THERE WILL BE LABS THE ENTIRE FIRST WEEK OF CLASSES (Aug. 31 – Sept. 3). There will also be recitation at 8am on Monday August 31.

       Numbers corresponding to the lab protocols in your lab notebook are listed on the Sunday of the week for that particular lab. All labs are four hours long. Occasionally, you finish before the end of the session. If that happens, you may leave with the permission of your teaching assistant. There may also be times when the lab runs longer than four hours. Make every effort to stay until the experiment is finished. There are several occasions when experimental organisms must grow overnight. In those cases, you are responsible for coming in outside of regular lab hours and performing the next steps of the experiments. Outside-of-lab manipulations generally require less than fifteen minutes.

Recitation: 210 NSC - Monday 8:00 - 8:50

THERE WILL BE RECITATION ON MONDAY, AUGUST 31

Recitations will cover information on upcoming labs and go over things that will be on the exams (like calculations) that may not be covered in lab. Exam questions will be taken from the material covered in the lectures, as well as from the labs themselves. Exams are given during recitation as noted on the calendar in your lab notebook.

Calculators:  Only numeric calculators may be used on exams.  Alpha-numeric calculators are not allowed.  Cell phones and PDAs are also not allowed to be out during exams.

Attendance in Lab

You must attend each laboratory session and arrive on time.  If you miss 2 labs, no matter what the reason, you will receive an F for the course.

Students are required to show up during the lab period for which they have registered. Under no circumstances are students allowed to attend a lab period for which they have not registered.

Electronics in Lab

Electronics, including computers, phones, and music players, are not allowed to be used in the lab under any circumstances. If you receive an emergency phone call, please leave the lab to answer it.

Lab Safety

1. While you are welcome to wear a lab coat during lab, a lab coat is not required.
2. Since you will be using a glass pipettes and chemicals, you must wear shoes with that cover your entire foot (i.e., no sandals, open-toed shoes or slings/clogs)
3. Open flames are used frequently. For that reason, you may not wear clothing with loose sleeves or scarves.
4. Also because of open flames, long hair must be pulled back from the face.
5. Mouth pipetting is NEVER allowed. Anyone observed mouth pipetting will lose credit for that day (i.e., zero for the quiz and the day counted as an absence).
6. When necessary for safety, you will be provided with eye protection and/or disposable gloves.

Disability Accommodations

If you have a diagnosed disability that will make it difficult for you to carry out the course work as outlined or requires accommodations such as recruiting note takers, readers, or extended time on exams, please advise Dr. Hollingsworth during the first week of the course. Arrangements for reasonable accommodations will be considered.  

Lab Reports

Lab reports will be due as noted on the calendar in your lab notebook.  Lab reports don't have to be elaborate or long, but they MUST BE TYPED.  Lab reports are due at the start of your lab period.  LAB REPORTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE.  IF FOR SOME REASON YOU CANNOT MAKE IT TO LAB, HAVE A FRIEND BRING IT IN FOR YOU.

Written reports are only required for labs 2, 3 and 4.  Lab 1 has a number of techniques to practice.  You will be graded on the results of your techniques for lab 1, but there is no lab report necessary for that one.

Arrange lab reports as follows:

Purpose:
Why are you doing this lab? What principle(s) are you supposed to be learning from it? (Usually this is only a couple of sentences)

Results:
Give a name for each experiment. Identify which of the sections (if any) in the experiment were controls. All data (gel pictures, cell counts, absorbance readings, etc.) must be clearly labeled and included in your results. You do not have to re-type methods/instructions from the lab noteboook. Do not leave out data. If you count it, measure it, take a picture of it, or quantify an experiment in any way, that data needs to be included in your lab report. Graphs must be either derived from a spreadsheet or, if graphed by hand, graphed on graph paper.

Discussion:
Include here the answers to any questions asked in the manual. Also include the reasoning behind the results you got - what do you conclude from these results? If the experiments didn't work, propose possible reasons why.

Example of how to report results: Lab 3.5
Name: "Agarose gel electrophoresis to check restriction digests"
Then you'll put in the picture of the gel, with all the lanes labeled.
Then you'll explain what the results are. Does the genomic DNA appear completely digested?
Does the vector DNA appear completely digested?

Lab reports don't have to be very long, but they do need to be complete - each experiment reported and discussed. 

Exams and Lab Practical

Exams will be given during the Monday recitation period as noted on your calendar in the lab manual. They will be 50 minutes long and will cover only topics that have been covered since the last exam EXCEPT - All exams will include concentration calculation questions. This topic will include dilutions of a concentrated solution to make a less concentrated one, molarity calculations (you will be given the molecular weight of the chemical), and percentage calculations, including weight-percent (wt/vol) and volume percent (vol/vol). Questions of this type will be on ALL exams. If you don't understand these types of calculations, ask questions of Dr. Hollingsworth or your TA until you feel comfortable performing the calculations. Requests for re-grades go to Dr. Hollingsworth. Your request must be in within one week after the graded exams have been handed back.

A lab practical will be given during the final lab periods, December 7-10. This exam will include things like pipetting, subcloning, proper sterile technique, etc. There will also be a written section with calculation questions on it. Everything asked on the lab practical will be from something you have directly experienced during the course of the semester. The demonstration portion of the exam will take approximately 15 minutes and will be performed under the supervision of a teaching assistant. You will be allowed an additional 15 minutes for the calculation portion of the exam.

Quizzes

       Quizzes will be administered during the first 10 minutes of each lab period, except for the first week. These are easy points. If you have read your lab manual prior to walking into class, you should be able to answer these 2 or 3 short-answer questions. The purpose of the quizzes is to ensure you've read the manual and have some clue as to what will be expected of you. There might also be a question or two from lab reports that are due during that week. There will be a simple calculation question. Quizzes will NOT be given after the first 10 minutes. If you are late to lab, you will get a zero for that quiz. The ten highest quiz grades will be used to calculate your final grade for the lab.

Grading

       Total points for a perfect score for the semester will be 800. The teaching assistant points are entirely extra credit that will be given to you SOLELY AT THEIR DISCRETION.
No exam scores will be dropped. Grades will not be curved.
720-800 will be an A, 640-719 a B, etc. Plus/minus grading may be used when a student is very close to the cutoff for a particular grade. So far, there has never been a year when less than 50% of the class made A's and B's. However, should the average for this year drop below 70%, the scores will be curved such that the average is a C.
       The teaching assistants may subtract points from lab report scores if you are late to lab or if they feel that you have been behaving in an inappropriate (i.e., unsafe) manner.

Absences Only medical emergencies are valid excuses for missing an exam or lab.  If you miss an exam with a valid medical excuse, Dr. Hollingsworth (not your TA) must be notified within 24 hours of the missed lab or exam.  Leave her an e-mail at hollings@buffalo.edu.  All medical excuses must be accompanied by a signed doctor's excuse with the doctor's phone number.  All excuses will be verified. 

Missed exams will be re-administered as oral exams.

Missed quizzes cannot be re-taken. 

End