A. Three main things in BIOL463
Please describe, briefly, the three things that you learned in BIOL463 and that you consider to be the “most important” ones.
1) Loss of function experiments tells you necessity; gain of function experiments tell you sufficiency.
2) In different cells, enhancer sequences are not always enhancers; it depends on what binds to the enhancer sequence to cause activation or repression of a gene. It is better to call these regions regulatory elements.
3) Making direct conclusions from figures in an article and then using them to construct a model to explain how things work.
B. Identify types of knowledge
For each of your three “things”, please try to identify what type of knowledge it represents (Factual, Conceptual, Procedural/Skills, Metacognitive).
1) Conceptual
2) Conceptual
3) Skill
C. What makes “things” stand out for you
For each of your three “things”, please indicate what made it stand out for you.
1) This concept resonated throughout the whole course including the midterms and quizzes we wrote. This is the biggest take home message of this course. Many of the examples we looked at in class are GOF or LOF experiments.
2) Before this course, I thought that enhancers are named so because it was their sequence that determined their control over genes. However, I know understand that it depends on what proteins in the cell bind to the sequence that determines the control of the genes.
3) Throughout this course, it is very important to distinguish between direct conclusions and models. We got to practice this skill throughout the entire course.
D. Relevance/use
Please describe, briefly, what you expect each of these three “things” to be useful or relevant for.
1) It is important to distinguish between LOF and GOF experiments since they tell you different things. Different conclusions will result in different possible models so it is important to not confuse these conclusions.
2) This means that it is important to check whether your enhancer sequence actually increase the expression of a gene in a specific cell. You cannot assume that an enhancer will increase the expression of all genes in all cell types. There may also be position-dependent effects.
3) This skill will be useful in the future when I will be interpreting papers for research. Having this framework of determining what the figure shows and concludes and what you can take away from it will help understanding the paper better.
E. Three main things in your undergraduate education
Please describe, briefly, the three things that you learned during your undergraduate education and that you consider to be the “most important” ones. Why do you find them so important?
1) To reflect on what you have learned (using Learning Journals is a great choice) to reinforce what you have learned in a class. This also shows how much knowledge you have gained over a four month time period of classes. You would get a greater appreciation of the class after reflecting on how much you can take away from the class.
2) It is important to make connections with many people around you. Networking is the key to many opportunities in the future. There are many times when you can ask people for help or to collaborate with in the future. Additionally, people may ask you for help and this allows you to be a better person.
3) It is important to take a wide range of courses. It opens your eye to the world around you that you may not know existed. Knowledge is quite open with the age of the Internet. However, taking these classes allows you to be more critical about what you are learning in class. Additionally, it may help increase the understanding of other topics because you may be able to make some connections with what you already know.