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WORDS TO THE WISE: Register EARLY! This course is offered once or twice per year, and lab space is limited.

General Information

This laboratory course advances skills introduced in BIOC 211. The ability to work effectively as part of a team is part of the "Maturity and responsibility" objective shared by the undergraduate teaching laboratories in Natural Sciences and Engineering (see Laboratory Learning Objectives); teamwork is a major emphasis of this lab course.
- PRE-requisite = BIOC 211: Introductory Experimental Biosciences or Instructor Permission

BIOC 313 is taught in the second half of FALL semester:
- ENROLLMENT IS LIMITED (a minimum of 6 students must register for this course to be offered)
- Lab meets at scheduled times (1-5 pm) two days during the week and is self-scheduled at other times
HOW TO REGISTER:
- If you have met the prerequisites, you may register on Esther.
  NOTE: please do not attempt to register if you have not taken BIOC 211.
- You will receive a message from OWL-Space before classes start with information about the first day of lab.
REQUIRED TEXTS (assignments are listed for each day of lab):
1. CANVAS site for BIOC 313
2. BIOC 313 Web site: The course web site is REQUIRED reading material; failure to follow instructions/guidelines given on the site because "...I didn't read/see that..." is NOT an acceptable excuse.
3. Assigned scientific articles
RECOMMENDED TEXTS (on reserve for 2-hour checkout at Fondren):
1. Ptashne, Mark (2004) A Genetic Switch: Phage Lambda Revisited, 3rd Ed., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY (also available through Amazon.com)
2. McMillan, Victoria E. (2006) Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences, 4th Ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston, MA (also available through Borders.com)
SCHEDULE CHANGES AND MAKE-UP LABS:

**IF YOU ARE NOT 100% CERTAIN THAT YOU WILL COMPLETE THIS LAB, PLEASE DROP NOW.**
- Do not sign up for this or any Biosciences lab course if there is a strong chance that you will be away for interviews or other travel on a lab day. This course only lasts 8 days--so if you miss one day of lab then you have missed a significant portion of the course. Furthermore, your absence would be a huge inconvenience to your partner. Check the lab schedules for possible conflicts before making the commitment.
- The laboratory studies require a considerable investment of the instructor's time and the schedule is tight. Therefore there can be no makeup labs. The lab is typically filled to capacity. Please don't plan to miss any labs.
DISABILITY: If you have a disability that you think may affect your degree of success in this or in any other course, please read the notice.

Instructor Information

WHO: My name is Beth Beason Abmayr (Dr. Beason) and I have a Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I teach BIOC 111, 311, 313, and 413.
WHERE: My office is Anderson Biological Laboratories (ABL) 326.
HOW TO CONTACT ME: My office hours are by appointment.. If you need to reach me outside of the lab, my preferred method of communication is e-mail (bbeason@rice.edu); I will do my best to respond in a timely manner (weekends, holidays, and early/late hours are excluded). Please do not leave me a voice mail message unless it's a true emergency.
HOW I CONTACT YOU: I will frequently send communications to the class through Owl-Space e-mails or announcements; check any mailing from Owl-Space or the instructor's Rice address or with the subject line starting with "Bios 311:" You will be held responsible for all such communications.

***CRITICAL INFORMATION*** My primary means of communication with you is via Owl-Space and e-mail:
1. Please use your Rice e-mail account for communications concerning this course
2. If you use SPAM filters on your mail readers, make sure you list bbeason@rice.edu as "accept"
3. Check frequently to ensure that you do not exceed your e-mail quota
4. Send all new messages and replies to bbeason@rice.edu
5. If you use an alias, sign the message with your full name
RECOMMENDATION LETTER POLICY:
***A good letter can carry a lot of weight once you make it through the initial screening process, so think carefully about choosing your recommenders.***
- Writing a letter of recommendation is an important, albeit voluntary, responsibility. I put quite a bit of thought into each letter, describing special qualities and recalling specific interactions to emphasize the capabilities of the individual. To write a credible recommendation letter I must know an individual well enough to defend that person's qualifications. Successful completion of Bios 311 does not, by itself, provide a basis for a strong recommendation.
  
  If I decline to write a letter for you it is most likely because I have insufficient information for a credible recommendation. I would be writing a "form" letter based solely on your final grade in my course. For competitive summer programs as well as graduate or professional schools, you need strong supporting letters, not strictly academic letters based on completion of a single course.
- I will need a resume, unofficial transcript organized by semester (include your name on printed copies), program address(es), and minimal program information so that the letter can be appropriately targeted. The information can be provided as e-mail attachments.
- The beginning of each new semester is an extremely busy time, and my attention must be focused on teaching. If a due date for a letter of recommendation falls during the first seven weeks of classes (fall or spring semester) I must receive all pertinent information for new letters before the first day of classes. Please plan ahead. With reasonable notice, I will provide letters for those students with letters already on file, provided no major modifications are necessary (i.e., the letters were written within the last 6 months or so).
- Many summer programs have due dates as early as January 15, with most coming due from February 1 to March 1. Start planning early, and if you want a letter from me and do not have all of the program addresses, at least give me the information needed to write the initial letter before classes start.
- Do not wait until the fall semester to request a new letter for medical school; the latest I will write new letters for medical school is JUNE. With reasonable notice, I will provide letters for those students with letters already on file, provided no major modifications are necessary (i.e., the letters were written within the last 6 months or so).

Course Description

This advanced laboratory course was developed for the spring 2008 semester to introduce students in Natural Sciences & Engineering to the molecular biological techniques used in synthetic biology.

HISTORY: In 2006, Rice formed a synthetic biology team composed of undergraduates primarily from Biochemistry & Cell Biology and Bioengineering. Faculty and graduate students from the departments of Biochemistry & Cell Biology (BCB), Bioengineering (BIOE), Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (CHBE), and Computational & Applied Mathematics advise the team (CAAM). Our team competed at the internationally Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Jamboree held at M.I.T. in November of 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Here's a link to the OLD Bios 313 web site: Bios 313: Advanced Experimental Molecular Biology
*Microarray Analysis of Gene Expression (2003-2007)
SPECIAL NOTE: BIOC 313 is an ADVANCED laboratory course and requires greater independence than BIOC 211. The experimental procedures may be less demanding than those you performed in BIOC 211, and you write just one short paper rather than three full-length research papers. HOWEVER, just because the experiments may be more "cookbook" does not mean the lab requires less effort. I place a greater emphasis on analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data; if you keep a "sloppy" notebook and slap a proposal together at the last minute without really understanding "why" you did a procedure and "what" the results mean, you will be disappointed with your final grade.

Course Organization

Students work in teams of 3-4 in the laboratory. Each person is responsible for performing and recording experimental procedures and analyzing the data.
Individuals are expected to be prepared for the lecture material and to have read over the procedures for the day.
Each student has an assigned set of pipets. These pipets must be kept in good working condition and stored properly at the end of each lab.
Each team has an assigned bench-top cooler for storage of samples.
Each student will be held responsible for the cleanliness of work areas at the end of each lab. For example, pipets should be returned to holder, trash should be discarded, and bench-top coolers should be returned to the freezer.

Laboratory Safety

You must review the information on laboratory conduct and safety before working in any of the biosciences labs.
You will have to buy a pair of safety glasses from the campus bookstore and bring these with you the first day of lab.
For additional information, please see Rice University Environmental Health and Safety Department.

If you would like to learn more about the field of bioinformatics, consider taking BIOC 571: Bioinformatics: Sequence Analysis or BIOC 572: Bioinformatics: Network Analysis

Copyright, Acknowledgements, and Intended Use
Created by B. Beason (bbeason@rice.edu), Rice University, 29 June 2006
Updated 4 October 2016