How to develop a procedure for my experiment?

[Lannister]

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I'm applying for research funding this summer, and this involves writing a research proposal. It's (supposedly) a relatively straightforward experiment, so my PI has given me an end goal (isolate a protein and determine its half-life) and decided to let me figure out a procedure myself. I'm totally at a loss, as I have basically no research experience. My plan was just to look at papers from other similar experiments , but I'm kind of overwhelmed. So I was just wondering if anyone has any advice for what would be the best way to go about writing this procedure? I'll definitely be asking my PI for help, but I want to at least come up with a procedure, even if it's crappy, just to show that I put in the effort.

 

[eteshoe]

1. Google + YouTube
2. Look up some methods journals (Nature Methods, etc)
3. find some similar papers on the subject and look at their methods sections

Just take it a step at a time. Protein isolation is a pretty well established biochemical technique and there are plenty of resources for how to determine protein half lives.

 

[bananafish94]

What I like to do is write a very general procedure based on what I've read in the literature, and I put all of the things that are subject to change in our experiment (i.e. volumes, specific reagents, lengths of time, etc.) in general terms in italics. Then once I make sure it's sound in a very general sense, I meet with the PI to fill in all of the blanks and make it specific to our experiment.

 

[Dr. Death]

And don't worry about feeling overwhelmed. That's one of the steps of doing research.

 

[Frogger27]

And don't worry about feeling overwhelmed. That's one of the steps of doing research.

Thanks, I needed that today... Stressful day in the lab lol