Plant Cell Biology (Version Master)

STRUCTURE

The module consists of a theoretical and a practical part. It can be used as Research Module for the subjects Botany, Developmental Biology, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology and is rated with a written examen. Contributions from other examination forms (group exercise, special topic, presentation, protocol, project proposal) are integrated with the score from the written exam.

Theory Part: dates for the lectures are found here. Further, you need to pick 3 of the group exercises (questions and tests on Ilias) and 5 of the special topics (tasks and materials on Ilias).
Practical Part: You get topics and informations on a research topic. Each group will develop their project by themselves (this is the base for the project proposal) and is also responsible for conducting the plan. There is a kick-off meeting, where you get informations on your topic and an intermediate meeting, where you present your plan for the practical phase. The topics are here.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

group exercise. The lectures are giving impulses that should help you to remember the knowledge, which you should have acquired during your Bachelor studies. To help you in that, we try to get you to apply and integrate this knowledge. For this purpose you should discuss in teams the exercise sheets that are provided on Ilias. When you are stuck in your team, please feel free to ask the teachers for advice. The answers will then be inserted individually into the respective Ilias test (Path: Fakultät Chemie und Biowissenschaften - laufendes Semester - BIO_MA_FOR_1201_Plant_Cell_Biology). In total you can get maximally 3 x 6 = 18 scores that will be added to the scores from the written exam. There are several such group exercises. You can pick three of them. More than 3 will not be scored. If you deliver more than 3, we will rate the first three of them.
special topic. Here, individual aspects of the topic will be deepened by working on a task. This task is also addressing common problems in cell biology, as you will face them in your later career. For some, there are additional slides and video recordings of those on Ilias. On this base, you need to solve the task and the team needs to deliver a short written report (less than 5 pages). Here, you can in total acquire 5 x 6 = 30 scores that are added to the scores from the written exam. The special topics are submitted one per team by e-mail. Deadline: until the end of the subsequent block. You can pick five of these special topics. More than 5 are not scored.
project proposal. Before you start your practical part, the team needs to come up with a plan (based on the informations we provide, the kickoff meeting and additional discussions with your mentor). This is written down as project proposal (around 5-10 pages). >>>>>template project proposal<<<<<< Why do we ask you to do this? Not only in science, but also in industry, one needs to fight for the resources to do, what one wants to do. Here, you need to know, what you want to do and convince others that this is a good idea. For this project proposal you can acquire up to 4 scores that are again added to the scores of the written exam. The proposal is sent in by the entire team until the end of the subsequent block.
protocol. Each group needs to deliver a group protocol. Correct protocols are central to science. You can get up to 8 scores that are added to the scores of the written exam. Again, this is team work (by e-mail als pdf till the end of the subsequent block. What is important for a good protocol? What are quality marks pdf.
presentation. At the end of the module, the teams present their results. Duration 20-25 min per team. Good presentations can acquire a bonus (the final mark will go up by 0.3 steps). A few tipps (also criteria for the rating). Please give in the introduction the background of your topic and arrive at a real research question (around 1/3 of your slides). Methods should not give all the details of your buffer, but rather the idea and design of your approach (here, visualisations are helpful). In the result section, it is not the point that you cast the 235 raw data on the screen, but you need to select the central results (work with examples). Make sure to label images and graphs properly. It is also meaningful to have a short caption (if you forget to tell, people will still be able to understand). Things to be compared should be comparable (for instance, scaling of graphs should be the same). In the discussion, do not loose yourselves in details, but try to come to a real explanation (working hypothesis). Also here an image tells more than 1000 words. Avoid statements as "we cannot make a conclusion, because the experiment has only been repeated once". We know that you will not arrive at the Nobel Prize after a few weeks of research. It is more interesting to hear, what you conclude from your data. Have the courage to stand behind your observations, but do not feel shy, if you see critical points ("while this result can be explained by our hypothesis, there might be also possibility B that they can be explained by..."). A quality mark are statements like "if we want to discriminate between the two possibilities, we suggest to do the following experiment..."). A last slide, where you project in 10 ms all the sources you used, is something you can spare as well. Rather, you should talk about central sources, you used and present them properly.
Written exam. Duration 2 h, admitted materials. Calculator (rarely needed), your brain, nothing else. You can reach up to 60 scores (in total 50% of the scores). The examen is bilingual (all questions in German and in English, you can answer in any of the two languages).