Lecture 06:
Basics of Cell Biology Literature Reading
Methods of Cell Biology (I): Imaging
Basics of the Diffusion Theory
BME42-620 Lecture 06, September 15, 2011
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A Case Study: Malaria & Artemisinin y • Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by y parasite Plasmodia.
• 225 million cases each year; 1 illi h million deaths in 2010 (World malaria report).
• 4000 recipes
• 380 extracts from 200 herbs
• Compound 191 artemisinin
http://www.laskerfoundation.org/
Youyou Tu y http://www.who.int/malaria/world_malaria_report_2010/en/index.html
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Outline
• Basics of cell biology literature reading
• Imaging (I): light microscopy
• Imaging (II): electron microscopy
• Basics of the diffusion theory
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Outline
• Basics of cell biology literature reading
• Imaging (I): light microscopy
• Imaging (II): electron microscopy
• Basics of the diffusion theory
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Why Focus on Literature Reading?
• Biology is a scientific discipline undergoing rapid development.
• For in-depth understanding of cell biology, it is essential to read primary research literature.
• The cell biology information that can be covered in our textbook is rather limited. limited • Basic skills for effective reading of cell biology research literature can be learned.
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An Overview of Cell Biology Literature gy •
Journals
– Examples of general purpose journals
- Science
- Nature
- PNAS
– Examples of specialized journals
- Cell and associated journals
- Journal of Cell Biology
-N t
Nature associated j i t d journals l - Plos journals
•
Commercial versus noncommercial journals
- subscription versus open access
•
Review journals and review articles
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How to Read Cell Biology Papers (I)
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It is essential to read and evaluate contemporary cell biology papers critically.
- Why so critical?
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General guidelines
- Fundamentally it is
References: Press, 1993. • Jonathon Howard, Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton, Sinauer Associated, 2001. where k is Boltzmann 's constant and T is absolute temperature (Einstein 1905)