Your paper is due April 26, the last day of class. Also on that day,
I would like each of you to give a 10 minute overview of your paper.
Overview:
The paper should be 5-7 pages, double spaced and typed. It should be a critical
review of a specific, outstanding problem on some aspect of small RNAs,
and should have as much of your own input as you can provide. You should
focus on 2 to 3 papers for the main part of the paper, but at least 5-7
papers should be referenced (many of these will be used in the introduction
and/or discussion part of your paper).
Grading will reflect the degree of critical evaluation of the material and
the amount of independent thought woven into the paper.
You may choose your own topic, but if you do please check with me before
you get started on the paper. Or, we can work together to develop a topic.
Paper Format:
The paper should have an abstract or summary of no more than 3/4 of a page,
single spaced. The rest of the paper should be double spaced, and should
be no more than 7 pages in length, ignoring any figures you include.
There should be an introduction in which you provide the background information
and the problem/question that your paper will address. There should be a
final section in which you present specific findings/results from two or
three papers that address the problem. You do not have to present every
finding from each paper. The findings should also be discussed and critically
evaluated in this section. Figures from the papers can be used to reinforce
the findings and make it easier to talk/present them, and you may want to
include figures of your own if they will be useful to the reader.
You might have but do not have to have a conclusion section where the main
points are summarized. In this section or the previous one if you do not
have a conclusion section, you need to indicate the outstanding/remaining
questions and hopefully suggest experimental approaches to address those
questions.
Finally, you need a reference list that cites any paper that you give information
from in full---all authors, title of paper, journal, volume, page numbers,
and year of publication. I suggest you use a format like that in the review
article on microRNAs (the Cell review article by Bartel).
In short, your paper should be similar to what we do in class for a single
paper, but instead for two or more papers (thus you need to be selective
in the data you show/discuss and you need to present a CRITICAL assessment
of the topic/problem).