Posted: November 18th, 2015

mismatch Repair project

Lab Report Instructions

Overview: Lab reports should be written as if they were a journal article. The best way to understand how to write a journal article is to read journal articles and mimic their formatting structure. This certainly does not mean plagarizing, instead it means examining the purpose and structure of each sentence and then writing a parallel sentence that conveys the same meaning for your specific project.

Structure of a lab report
Title
Authors name and contact information
Date
Abstract (100-200 words, usually 1 paragraph)
This should be written after you have finished the rest of the report since you will have a better perspective of the project then.
Broken down sentence by sentence it should read:
1) Background
2) What is not known/what is your question
3) Your approach to solving the problem
4) Summary of your results
5) Your conclusions
Introduction (3-4 paragraphs). This gives the context and background information. You should cite at least 3 papers here. Broken down paragraph by paragraph, it should read:
1) Big picture, how your topic is relevant
2) More specific details on your genetic pathway
3) Same as above
4) Summary of what remains unknown and what your general approach was. Use first person and present voice ie. “In this report, I conduct a screen to …”

Materials and Methods
Explains how experiments were done so that somebody else could repeat them after reading the paper. Use subheadings to divide up the different methods such as electroporation or Maxiprep. Use full sentences and the third person passive voice “Cells were spun ten minutes…”

Results and Discussion
Explain the experiments you did and the rationale behind them. Avoiding too many details and calculations – those can be left to the Materials and Methods section. Then describe what you observed with references to the figures of your data that you are describing. Finally state your conclusions.

Each figure should have at least one paragraph of text describing it with the first sentence being the rationale and overview, followed by a description and the last sentence being the conclusion.

Discuss any experimental issues that you had and propose why they might have occurred.

Figures
Figures should be numbered and given a title. Axes should be labeled with units and tables should also have titles and labels.

References
Cite at least three references, including lab manual or textbook and at least 1 primary literature.