BCMB30010: Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science

30% Lab notebook maintenance, checked every week; 20% practical skills assessment; 15% Report draft components (5% intro, 2.5% methods, 2.5% results, 5% discussion); 20% Final Report; 15% final exam; HURDLE: completion of 2 worksheets, one at beginning of semester, one at the end and must achieve at least 70% in each to pass the hurdle

I thought I'd write a review on this subject given that it's now been reworked to ease some of the workload. The presentation, for example, has now been transferred to the new sister subject BCMB30012. As mentioned above, there are also no more lectures or tutorials, only a 5h prac every week. There are 4 main experiments, all focusing on phosphatases:

1) Transfect cells with phosphatase gene to express your enzyme
2) Enzyme expression and activity assay
3) Phosphatase localisation within the cell (microscopy)
4) Mass spec

Ex 1+2 will form the basis of your report and Ex 4 will teach you how to complete the 2nd hurdle worksheet. Ex 3 is really chill, and not really assessed, you just look at fluorescence under a microscope, pretty fun.

The assessment has also changed a bit:

Instead of having a 1-time draft for the report worth 15%, its now been split into 4 deadlines, each for one component. While this makes it easier to focus on one thing rather than get stressed about writing a full draft of the report in one sitting, this also means 4x the deadlines. And its critical to do well in the draft, so you can get feedback and write a good final draft of the report. However, 40% of the whole final draft will be an abstract and an appendix where you outlined how you incorporated the feedback from the draft into the final version. A lot of students, myself included felt a bit bamboozled by this because we did not get any feedback on any abstract and didn't know we had to write this appendix, so really only like 50% of you final report will actually be the draft components.

The lab notebook is now 30% altogether, and you have to submit it every week, 2 days after your prac, and you should get a grade by your next prac. This will take you time. Don't underestimate how much time it will actually take you to complete the notebook every week. Some weeks it took 3 hours, others it took a whole day. DO NOT leave it until the last hour, you've been warned. When it comes to the marking, I'd quite subjective to each demo. I had Alex and was really happy, but I know others were stricter in certain aspects. It really depends on who you get as a demo and figuring out what they focus on and what they want to see on your notebook, and how.

The 2 worksheets were before each graded at around 2-3%, and they've now been changed to a hurdle: you must deliver and get at least 70% on each to pass the subject. The first one is about using protein data bases and pubmed and really easy, you'd have to intentionally do bad to get anything under 80%. The second one is about Mass Spec and a lot harder if you're unfamiliar with it. You will go through most of it in class in the last 2-3 weeks, but make sure you pay attention and ask questions if you don't understand what's going on. I know someone that got exactly a 70% and im pretty sure its just because their demo was kind. This is such a stupid way to fail the subject, just make sure you dont miss the pracs on Experiment 4 and again, ask if you don't understand and you'll be right.

Lets see what else? The exam is now 15% and given that there are no more lectures a lot of us were really confused as to what they could ask, but it was pretty chill. Half of it was calculations that you should have learned how to do in the pracs or year 2, and the other half was design an experiment (pretty easy) and a mass spec data analysis (again, experiment 4 is pretty important, make sure you pay attention).

This subject is definitely easier than it was in previous years, but it still requires a lot of time commitment. The notebook and prac prep alone was half of my study for the whole week. It wasn't necessarily a hard subject, getting an h1 should be pretty easy, like nothing was particularly challenging, but it does depend on you putting in the time. It's a must subject for anyone looking to go into wet lab research and Iza is a great and really kind coordinator. Great subject, but I would highly recommend under loading if you're going to take it. I took 3 subjects and I struggled to keep up as it is, I can't imagine what it would have been like with 4...

Yes, with screen capture

No lectures for this subject anymore, but Iza, the new coordinator will do some in-prac "tutorials" outlining the theory for some techniques

Yes, but the content has changed so not fully relevant anymore

4.5 Out of 5

None

1x 5h prac per week (no more lectures or tutes)

Sem 1 2021

H1 (87)