Category Archives: Project

Final Project: Annotated bibliography

Posted on December 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here is the link to the annotated bibliography of my final project: annotated-bibliography

(Note: An annotated bibliography was included in my project outline located in a previous blog post, but it has been updated since then. The version posted in this blog post is the updated version.)

In my annotated bibliography, I commented on 10 scholarly works that I consulted the most while working on my final project. Most of the articles were used to familiarize myself with what is known in the field in order to find a gap in the literature that my project could potentially address, while other articles were used to devise an experimental approach that would lead to findings that would fill that gap. Creating an annotated bibliography during the planning stages of my project was helpful because by writing a short summary of what I considered to be the most relevant information from each article, I did not have to sift through large amounts of text more than once. Although a lot of time was put into making the annotated bibliography, a lot of time was also saved by not having to read whole journal articles over and over again.

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Posted in Portfolio, Project, Reflections

Final Project and Layperson Summary

Posted on December 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here are the links to my final project and its layperson summary, respectively:

leon-lai-final-project

leon-lai-layperson-summary

Looking back at the experience of doing my final project, I would compare the experience to hiking the Grouse Grind. Both involve a long and arduous journey that is constantly challenging, and the finish line can often seem far and out of reach. But with hard work and determination, what seem to be insurmountable challenges can be overcome. And when the journey is finally complete, you gain a great sense of accomplishment.

One of the biggest lessons that I will take away from the final project is to be persistent when facing a challenge. There were often times when I had difficulty expressing my ideas in writing and it felt frustrating to be at a standstill when I wanted to move forward with my project. For example, the background section of my project was challenging for me to write because I had consulted many previous studies that served as the inspirations my research question, but it was difficult for me to figure out how to integrate these previous studies in my background section in order to set the stage for my project. Despite the difficulty I experienced, I kept working at it and I was eventually happy with what I wrote.

Though the challenges of the final project for BIOL 463 are over, there will still be plenty of challenges to face as I move forward, and I believe that persistence will help me overcome them.

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Posted in Portfolio, Project, Reflections

Intermediate Stage of Project: Project Outline

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here is the link to my project outline: project-outline

One lesson that I learned while working on my project outline was that dividing the work over the span of many days was an effective approach to completing a large assignment. My strategy to complete the project outline involved setting intermediate deadlines for each section so that when the deadline for the full outline approached, I was not overwhelmed with a lot of work. This strategy worked well for me and I plan to use this strategy again for future projects in other courses.

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Posted in Intermediate stages of project, Portfolio, Project, Reflections

Intermediate Stage of Project: Updated Research Question

Posted on November 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

In a previous blog post (https://blogs.ubc.ca/lai463/2016/09/24/draft-research-question), I had shared a draft version of a research question that I was considering for the final project, which was the following:

“Are there genes that are expressed by the developing embryo that induce tolerance against the mother’s immune system?”

However, I later learned that my question had already been investigated. Therefore, I decided to create a new and original research question:

“Is chronic prenatal alcohol exposure sufficient to decrease production of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α by alveolar macrophages in response to infection by Streptococcus pneumoniae during adulthood in mouse models?”

There are a few reasons why I chose this question:

Firstly, I wanted to propose an experiment that could increase our knowledge of the immune system. I am an Integrated Sciences student with immunology as one of my integrations, so I am interested in learning more about the immune system.

Secondly, as the course title of BIOL 463 is “Gene Regulation in Development”, I wanted my research question to relate to development by investigating how a particular treatment during an early stage of life can affect processes in the body later in life.

Thirdly, I was inspired to study the effect of alcohol exposure because I have experience as a research assistant performing alcohol experiments to investigate the effect of acute alcohol exposure on learning (link to a previous post where I interpreted data that I collected: https://blogs.ubc.ca/lai463/2016/11/02/unprompted-post-data-interpretation-outside-the-classroom/).

Finally, I designed my question to be very specific to ensure that my question has not yet been investigated. This is important to me because I want my project to allow the potential discovery of new information that no one has ever known. In my opinion, by investigating an original question, the outcomes of the investigations are more meaningful.

With my new and original research question, I look forward to completing the rest of my final project.

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Posted in Intermediate stages of project, Portfolio, Project, Reflections

Intermediate Stage of Project: Draft Research Question

Posted on September 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

In conventional pregnancies, 50% of developing embryo’s DNA does not come from the mother. However, the mother’s immune system does not consider the embryo to be dangerous. Surrogate mothers have even less DNA in common with the developing embryo, yet surrogate mothers can still successfully bear children who are not their own.

Based on my interest in how developing embryos are not negatively affected by the mother’s immune system, I created a draft research question:

Are there genes that are expressed by the developing embryo that induce tolerance against the mother’s immune system?

However, I consider this question to be quite broad. Therefore, I will work towards narrowing it down to ask about a specific gene. In past immunology courses, I have learned that T regulatory cells in the immune system secrete inhibitory cytokines such as IL-10 and TGF-β that suppress immune cells in order to promote immune tolerance. For the final version of my research question, I will consider discussing whether IL-10 expression by the developing embryo is necessary for immune tolerance by the mother.

I am concerned that my question may have already been answered by other researchers, so an important challenge that I will have to overcome is to create a novel question that no one has answered yet.

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Posted in Intermediate stages of project, Portfolio, Project

If I were a developmental biologist

Posted on September 10, 2016 | 1 comment

If I were a developmental biologist/geneticist, two questions that I would investigate are:

  1. What events during development determine whether a human is left-handed or right-handed?
  2. How does a mother prevent its immune system from reacting negatively to a developing embryo when 50% of the embryo’s genetic composition is foreign?

If I had to choose only one question to investigate, I would investigate question #2. As an integrated sciences student specializing in genetics and immunology, this question allows me to investigate within two of my favourite fields in science, while also placing emphasis on development.

If this question were solved, it would have impacts on developmental biology, science, as well as the community at large.

This investigation would help to answer whether embryo-specific gene expression plays a role in successful development of the embryo in the presence of the mother’s immune system.

In addition, by identifying how a mother’s immune system is prevented from reacting negatively to a developing embryo, it would have an impact on science by allowing us to gain insight on a potential factor that contributes to embryo mortality due to the mother’s immune system, which may then be investigated further in order to help prevent immune-mediated embryo mortality.

Furthermore, this investigation may provide ideas on how we can stop unwanted immune responses from occurring, which can have an impact on the community at large by solving problems such as allergies, inflammatory diseases, and rejection of transplanted organs.

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Posted in Portfolio, Project, Small Assignments