How to go about starting a mini research project?

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I currently work under a PI in a dev bio dept. at my undergrad. They mainly have me doing a lot of basic lab work ( cell culture, pcr, plating, imaging,etc.). I've gotten pretty use to the basic stuff so I asked my PI if there were any projects I could work on sort of independently (w/ supervision of course) and she said yes but I would first like to come up with my own ideas first and compare which route I should take. She told me to send her some proposals on my ideas.Basically I was just wondering how to start all of this (how to write up the proposal, how to structure the project, specific things I should focus on and how to get good ideas of projects in general ). First time really doing a project like this so I just need advice on where to start and how to go about it. Worse comes to worse I'll just work on a project she assigns me but I'd like to come up w/ something on my own. I was thinking something w/ the sox2-oct4 transcription factors in relation to pluripotent embryonic stem cells but I don't really know which direction to go with that and what I would be trying to find, just an idea.


Thanks

 

[ChrisMack390]

I currently work under a PI in a dev bio dept. at my undergrad. They mainly have me doing a lot of basic lab work ( cell culture, pcr, plating, imaging,etc.). I've gotten pretty use to the basic stuff so I asked my PI if there were any projects I could work on sort of independently (w/ supervision of course) and she said yes but I would first like to come up with my own ideas first and compare which route I should take. She told me to send her some proposals on my ideas.Basically I was just wondering how to start all of this (how to write up the proposal, how to structure the project, specific things I should focus on and how to get good ideas of projects in general ). First time really doing a project like this so I just need advice on where to start and how to go about it. Worse comes to worse I'll just work on a project she assigns me but I'd like to come up w/ something on my own. I was thinking something w/ the sox2-oct4 transcription factors in relation to pluripotent embryonic stem cells but I don't really know which direction to go with that and what I would be trying to find, just an idea.


Thanks

The easiest way, and the only way your PI is likely to get on board with, would be to read a couple of papers the lab recently put out, and figure out what some logical next steps would be. Often the discussion of the paper will plainly state this. You could also probably get away with just telling your prof "I found X paper really interesting and would love to get involved with that type of work" but if I were you I would at least take a stab at it yourself first.

 

[WedgeDawg]

Moving to pre-allo

 

[aldol16]

You have stumbled upon something even many of my fellow graduate students don't realize - it's much more fulfilling to come up with your own proposal than it is to carry out a project that was handed to you. The latter is unfortunately prevalent in many graduate (even top ones) programs.

So the best way to go about this is to read the literature on the topic you're interested in. Look for recent review articles. These will summarize the literature on the topic and then suggest future directions. Those future directions should be very interesting to you and you can take one of those paths and make it your own. You'll have to figure out how to test those future directions, of course but your experience in lab thus far should help you with that.

 

[eteshoe]

How much time do you have? That will really dictate the scope of your project.