BCH4024
Guidelines for choosing the topic for research paper/presentation
The disease chosen should be caused to a mutation, deletion, or overproduction of a single enzyme.
The normal functions of this enzyme should be known
Disease that have a multiple causes should not be chosen
The chosen disease should be well studied so that sufficient information about the causes of the disease documented
It is the students responsibility to do some preliminary research in order to determine if there is enough information known about a disease to write a complete paper
An example of a good topic is sickle cell anemia
This disease is caused by a mutation in a single protein – hemoglobin. The functions of normal hemoglobin as well as the mutated hemoglobin are well studied and much is known about the disease.
An example of a bad topic is Down’s syndrome.
This disease/ syndrome is caused when a third copy of the 21st chromosome is present. The disease/syndrome is caused by the overproduction of a large number of proteins and has a wide range of symptoms.
Other examples of bad topics (the causes are not well known or they are to broad):
Multiple sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Muscular Dystrophy
Parkinson’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease
Heart Attack and Stroke
Cancer
Huntingdon’s Disease
The topic should be unique to this class and cannot be a topic that was used for a paper or presentation in any other class. Students that “recycle” a paper will receive a grade of zero on the paper and presentation. Also, students repeating this class must choose a new topic.
Each student should email three appropriate topics to the professor in case another student has already chosen his or her first or second choice.