Primary literature

I've devoted much thought over the years to the issue of how to make the primary research literature accessible to naive readers such as undergraduate students.

Most of my ideas and strategies are summarized in an unpublished manuscript titled A Biology Journal Club for Engineering Students. A shorter summary is available in the form of a handout from the 2005 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium at the University of Washington.

Central to my approach is the creation of detailed study guides designed with confused students in mind. Below are links to some of these study guides along with the papers on which they are based. Some additional reading assignments created for undergraduates working with me in the lab are posted to my Student readings page.

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L. A. Castle et al., "Discovery and directed evolution of a glyphosate tolerance gene," Science 304: 1151-4, 2004. PubMed ID #15155947; study guide.

M. B. Elowitz and S. Leibler, "A synthetic oscillatory network of transcriptional regulators," Nature 403: 335-338, 2000. PubMed ID #10659856; study guide.

W. Gilbert and B. Muller-Hill, "The lac operator is DNA," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 58: 2415-2421, 1967. PubMed ID #4873589; study guide.

V. M. Ingram, "Gene mutations in haemoglobin: the chemical difference between normal and sickle-cell haemoglobin," Nature 180: 326-328, 1957. PubMed ID #13464827; study guide.

E. R. Kandel, "Calcium and the control of synaptic strength by learning," Nature 293: 697-700, 1981. PubMed ID #7290207; study guide.

K. P. Lemon and A. D. Grossman, "Localization of bacterial DNA polymerase: evidence for a factory model of replication," Science 282: 1516-1519, 1998. PubMed ID #9822387; study guide.

S. L. Lindstedt et al., "Limitations to aerobic performance in mammals: interaction of structure and demand," International Journal of Sports Medicine 9: 210-217, 1988. PubMed ID #3410627; study guide.

H.-R. Luscher et al., "How the size of motoneurones determines their susceptibility to discharge," Nature 282: 859-861, 1979. PubMed ID #229426; study guide.

G. J. Lutz and L. C. Rome, "Built for jumping: the design of the frog muscular system," Science 263: 370-372, 1994. PubMed ID #8278808; study guide.

F. Sanger et al., "DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 74: 5463-5467, 1977. PubMed ID #271968; study guide.