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OBJECTIVES
CRISPR Lab Summary Report
1. Write a report including the introduction, methods, results and conclusions of a scientific study.
ESSAY OVERVIEW
The Project Summary is due no later than 11:59 pm on May 9, 2022. Essays submitted after this
time will NOT be accepted. The Project Summary is worth 75 points.
1. Write an essay summarizing your laboratory research, your findings, your errors, and your
conclusions. Think of your audience as another student, who has received an “A” in an
introductory biology course, but who has not taken Genetics.
2. The essay should be typed in 12-point font, and double-spaced.
3. There is no page requirement for this essay. The essay should be long enough to include all of
the necessary information. The essay should not include repetitive, unnecessary, or irrelevant
information.
4. Use the past tense, throughout. For this essay, it is also acceptable to use the first-person
narrative, such as, “We performed a restriction enzyme digest…” Just be sure to keep the
perspective the same throughout the essay.
5. Every factual statement you make that is not an original thought, that is not common knowledge,
or that is not from your data, needs a citation. Do not quote sources. Instead, you should
describe, in your own words, the information from the sources, and give a citation for it.
6. You may work with your lab partners to clarify the procedures and interpret your results.
However, each student will turn in an individual lab report. All writing must be original and in
each student’s own words. Points will be deducted if lab partners show too much similarity in
the wording of essays.
7. You will incorporate primary literature within your report. You must cite at least two primary
journal articles from the last five years (2017-present). This means peer-reviewed studies of
original research. These must be different from the ones cited in the lab handouts. You may use
the citations from the lab handout, and other news articles, in addition to the two primary journal
articles. The specifics for how to incorporate and cite your references are given in the section
below. You should ask the instructor if you are unsure if your sources are primary sources.
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ESSAY SPECIFICS
The essay should contain each of the following sections, in the order given.
Title
The title should be informative and specific. It should give a sense of the specific goal of your
experiment. An example of a specific title is: “The detection of different plasmids found in Escherichia
coli based on differential restriction enzyme digests of the plasmids”. An example of an
uninformative title is: “Bacteria and plasmids”. Include your name below the title.
Introduction
Label this section of your essay “Introduction” in bold and begin your essay beneath the label.
The introduction includes the following components: the background for your topic, and a statement
about what you were investigating. The background provides general knowledge on the topic you
were investigating, and a justification for your experiment. There should be a clear statement about
the specific question you hoped to answer. In other words, you are telling the reader some basic
knowledge in order to understand your experiment, what you specifically wanted to find out from
your experiment, and why your experiment is interesting/relevant/important. A typical introduction
will be a page or so in length in order to address the broad reason for doing these experiments and
the specific goal you are trying to meet.
Methods
Label this section of your essay “Methods” in bold, and then continue your essay beneath the
label. This section should not include your data, or any interpretation of the data or your
errors. Data and interpretations should be presented in the following section.
Provide a summary of what you did to carry out the experiment. Unlike most primary journal articles,
you are not going to report every step of every procedure. Instead, summarize each procedure that
you used during the experiment, as follows:
• identify the procedure (e.g., PCR, restriction enzyme digest, etc.) by stating its name and
underlining it. Example: gRNA Design
• give the general purpose of each procedure
• describe generally how each method works, and any details that are relevant to the
understanding of the audience
• explain the importance of each procedure in the experiment
• include any details that will help your reader understand potential errors in the process
• Identify all controls in the experiment. Explain why the controls were used (i.e. What were
you trying to control for?). These will include the positive and negative controls.
• Include a description of any errors made while you were conducting the experiment, or any
confounding factors in your experiment. For example, if you forgot to centrifuge your DNA, or
you mixed up solutions within your tubes, you should state that here. Do not interpret these
errors in this section, simply describe them.
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Results and Conclusions
Label this section “Results and Conclusions” in bold and continue your essay beneath the label.
This section is a summary of your results as well as the conclusions you were able to draw based on
the experiments:
• You will provide a text summary and if available, graphics of your results. List the names of
the experiments as you did above for the ‘Methods’ by stating their name and underlining.
Then, summarize the results of each experiment. Be specific! For example, you might
state, “The expected fragment size for the plasmid fragment containing the sgRNA was 865
bp, which did not match the 400 bp fragment that appeared in the gel, as compared to the
DNA ladder.” You should not state, “It is clear that the plasmid fragment did not contain the
sgRNA.”
• If available, include a graphic and/or chart of your results. This may include the
transformation results of the bacteria and the yeast as well as the final images of your
selection plates and/or the results of any gels that were run.
• Result images and charts may be grouped together and submitted at the end of the
report. Because of this submission, they need to have figure titles and descriptions and
be referenced in the results and conclusions section. Figures should be numbered
sequentially in the order that they are first used (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). A figure title
should include the name of the experiment and a basic description of what is shown in
the figure. As an example: ‘Figure 1: PCR of gRNA This figure shows the gel
electrophoresis results of the PCR performed to clone the gRNA into the plasmid. Lane
1 contains the ladder and lane 2 contains the amplified DNA.’
• After stating the results, interpret your data, consider your errors, and draw a conclusion.
Each component is described below.
• Interpret the results of each procedure. What did you learn from the experiment?
How did the data help you draw this conclusion? For example, “We concluded that
the plasmid fragment from the restriction enzyme digest contained the sgRNA
because…”, then you would compare the expected and the actual fragment sizes.
• Keep in mind, you must reference any control groups, in order to interpret
your data. If a control was used, include it in your interpretation.
Summary Conclusion
Label this section “Summary Conclusion” in bold and continue your essay beneath the label.
In this section, you will give a general conclusion about the entire experiment. Did you accomplish
what you hoped to accomplish, and how do you know? If you did not achieve your overall goal, why
might this have happened? You should give a thoughtful consideration of the errors and mistakes.
This experiment was not about “getting the right results,” although that is always a bonus. This whole
process was about getting you to think like a scientist: “How do I know what my results are showing?”,
“What went wrong and why?”, “What can I do differently next time?”
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Works Cited Within the Text
Any statement that you made that was not an original thought, or is not common knowledge, must
have a citation within the text of the essay. You can incorporate citations within the sentence
structure of the text, or you can list the citations after the sentence.
You may use whatever scientific format with which you are familiar. You should always include the
author’s last name and the year. If you are not familiar with any particular citation style, you may use
the examples below as a template.
If there is a single author:
“Woese (2007) argues that use of the antiquated term ‘prokaryote’ misleads people about the
evolutionary history of cells.”
“It has been argued that the use of the antiquated term ‘prokaryote’ misleads people about the
evolutionary history of cells (Woese, 2007).”
If there are exactly two authors:
“Acinetobacter baylyi can survive long-term stationary phase (Lostroh and Voyles, 2009).
“Lostroh and Voyles (2009) found that pilU is expressed by starving cells.”
If there are more than two authors:
“Alberts et al. (2010) stated that cells control the flux of ions across their membranes.”
“The genome of Vibrio fischeri has two chromosomes (Greenberg et al., 2007).”
To cite the textbook, use (Brooker, 2016).
To cite lecture, use (Hollis-Brown, 2019, personal communication).
To cite the lab handouts, use (Hollis-Brown, 2019).
References
This section lists the complete citations for all works that were cited in the text. Any citation you
included in the text must be listed here. List sources in alphabetical order by first author’s last name.
Label this section “References” in bold, and continue directly beneath the label.
You may use any format (APA, etc.) with which you are familiar. If you do not have a preferred style,
then follow the styles shown below.
Article in a journal:
Arendsen, A. F., M. Q. Solimar, and S. W. Ragsdale. 1999. Nitrate-dependent regulation of
acetate biosynthesis and nitrate respiration by Clostridium thermoaceticum. J.
Bacteriol. 181:1489-1495.
Section of a book:
Brooker, R. J. 2016. Uses of Microorganisms in Biotechnology. pp. 477-480, in Concepts of Genetics,
2nd ed. McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY.
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Online sources of images or diagrams: http://www.who.int/cholera/technical/en/index.html, accessed
October 4, 2009.
To cite lecture, use: Marean, A. BIO 224. Lecture Title, Month, Date, Year.
To cite lab handouts, use: Hollis-Brown, L. BIO 224. Lab Handout Title, Year.
