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Assignment Details
- Submit a semester-long research project
- Topic: Human disease with a genetic component (must be approved)
- 4 primary research articles needed
- Consider these points:
- You will be asked to select 3 diseases. One will be approved.
- Stay away from diseases that are inherited with very simple patterns
ex: (cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia), or a result of aneuploidy (trisomy 21).
- If a disease has multiple genes associated with it, please select one gene to focus only one gene!
- For example, if I were researching Crohn’s disease, there are well over 150 genes associated. I would need to pick one (such as CARD15) to research during the semester.
- It’s okay to think outside the box! There are countless disease that have a genetic component. Don’t limit yourself to something you think will be “easy”. Easy diseases often become difficult because so much is known. It is often simpler to use a less-well known disease.
- No case studies, review papers, meta-analyses, or unpublished “grey literature” are allowed. Secondary sources (like review articles) are great starting points, but should be limited to the Introduction section.
Example Topics:
- Breast Cancer/BRCA1|
- Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome
- Sjorgen’s Syndrome
- Achondroplasia
Creating Search Terms and Phrases
- Boolean connectors- use AND, OR, NOT (sometimes AND NOT) to connect two or more search terms:
- AND finds all records with all of your search terms and narrows your search
- OR finds all records with one or more of your search terms and broadens your search
- NOT or AND NOT is used to exclude the following term and can help to focus a search where one term has different meanings or uses (e.g., Mexico NOT "New Mexico")
- Phrases in Quotes - most databases and web search engines allow you to search for exact phrases by placing them in quotes: "carbon footprint"
- Truncation - the library catalog and most databases use special characters to make searching easier in certain situations. Check the help screens in the catalog or database you are using to see what the special characters are for that resource.
- the asterisk * is often used to stand for multiple endings on a word (singular, plural, etc.): vot* finds vote, voter, voters
- wildcards are similar, but replace another character in a word: wom?n in the library catalog finds both woman and women
- Nesting - use parentheses to sort out the elements of a more complex Boolean search phrase, especially when you may want to search for more than one related term for one element of your phrase:
- (carbon OR ecological) AND footprint
- ("hip hop" OR rap) AND culture
