This reflection was submitted at the end of the term. As you can see I have come a long way
I think imprinting the one thing I learnt that stands out to me. Before this course, my understanding of imprinting was limited to imprinting via DNA methylation. In learning imprinting in X-inactivation, I discovered imprinting to be a more complex and interesting topic. It can invovle complex interactions between methylated sequences, histone modification and lncRNAs. As mentioned in one of my R&R previously, I came into this course with the impression that a lot of biological mechanisms may be rather rigid, which is why this stood out to me. In a sense, biological processes are tightly regulated and are rigid in some developmental processes. However, most mechanisms are dynamic as they can involve many factors and components. I have realized most of what I learnt as classical examples of regulation are really oversimplification of complex systems. Therefore, I was under the impression that most biological mechanisms are unchanging, and rigid processes. This course has made me realized, contrary to my previous impression, most biological processes are very dynamic, involves many components and can be flexible to accommodate mistakes. While mutations, misregulation could result in observable phenotypes as we have learnt throughout our undergraduate courses, it is possible that mistakes in development were compensated or does not cause any phenotypes.
I was not very confident in my paper reading skills in the beginning of the term. I have become more confident in reading papers because I have learnt to read figures critically with all the practise we have in class and in assignment.
I have learnt that I am rather impatient as a learner. This is important because it affects my reading and learning efficacy. While a lot of things may capture my interest, I get easily sidetracked/distracted, so reading papers become difficult when the papers are more than 20 pages long and I’m too impatient to carefully read it in one sitting. This is something I think I should work on to help myself learn better.