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i want to do a project about Alzheimer's disease?
any projects or ideas?
thank you!!!!!
Alzheimer's disease
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deleted-640754
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Alzheimer's disease
hi,
i want to do a project about Alzheimer's disease?
any projects or ideas?
thank you!!!!!
i want to do a project about Alzheimer's disease?
any projects or ideas?
thank you!!!!!
-
SciB
- Expert
- Posts: 2071
- Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:00 am
- Occupation: Retired molecular biologist, university researcher and teacher
- Project Question: I wish to join Scibuddies to be able to help students achieve the best science project possible and to understand the science behind it.
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Alzheimer's disease
Hi Lily and welcome to Scibuddies. Glad to have you with us.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is devastating and really needs to be prevented somehow. A lot of research has been done on the cells and proteins and tissues in the brain that are involved in AD but so far we haven't come up with an effective way to prevent it or at least to stop it from progressing. I have read quite a lot about the mechanism of AD and about the strategies that scientists are trying to block the degeneration in the brain that kills the neurons. It can be done in the lab, but so far not in a patient--at least not that I have heard of.
But you want to know if there's a project that you can do on AD. My simple answer would be NO, because this kind of research requires a big lab, expensive equipment and chemicals and lots of money and skill. Scientists often use models for studying a disease when they can't do experiments on humans. They may use mice as stand-ins or even just human brain cells growing in a culture dish in the lab. These are good ways to study AD, but they still require that you have access to a university research lab and the skills to do the experiments, not to mention the months of work involved.
If you have access to a university research lab that does cell culture and can spend weekends and evenings doing lab work you might be able to do some cell biology experiments related to AD, but this assumes that you can find a professor who is willing to take you on as a student. They usually want a person who can commit to several months of daily work to really get into a project. They won't usually take someone for just a couple of weeks. It takes too long to teach and train them before they can even begin to work safely in the lab.
OK. So, where does that leave you. There's only one other option--and all that requires is a computer and internet access. You can do a biotechnology research project online by using freely available software from various websites such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) that allows you to do targeted searches for specific genes and proteins and do several kinds of analyses all digitally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
This is a valid form of research, but it does require a lot of learning, thinking and technical know-how. I would do some reading on AD and watch some lectures about it on youtube until you understand how scientists think the disease begins and progresses. Then we can help you to try and come up with some candidate proteins or brain cells that are likely to be involved and you can propose a hypothesis that you can test online using protein analysis software along with DNA sequence data. This will be difficult because a lot of the technical jargon you won't understand. If I was there to explain it to you as you went along it would help, but I'm afraid that's not possible. But I will be here to answer questions.
Think about all this and let us know if you still want to pursue AD as a research project. Talk to your teacher about doing a software-driven project. It's not hands-on science but it is still valuable if done correctly.
Good luck!
Sybee
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is devastating and really needs to be prevented somehow. A lot of research has been done on the cells and proteins and tissues in the brain that are involved in AD but so far we haven't come up with an effective way to prevent it or at least to stop it from progressing. I have read quite a lot about the mechanism of AD and about the strategies that scientists are trying to block the degeneration in the brain that kills the neurons. It can be done in the lab, but so far not in a patient--at least not that I have heard of.
But you want to know if there's a project that you can do on AD. My simple answer would be NO, because this kind of research requires a big lab, expensive equipment and chemicals and lots of money and skill. Scientists often use models for studying a disease when they can't do experiments on humans. They may use mice as stand-ins or even just human brain cells growing in a culture dish in the lab. These are good ways to study AD, but they still require that you have access to a university research lab and the skills to do the experiments, not to mention the months of work involved.
If you have access to a university research lab that does cell culture and can spend weekends and evenings doing lab work you might be able to do some cell biology experiments related to AD, but this assumes that you can find a professor who is willing to take you on as a student. They usually want a person who can commit to several months of daily work to really get into a project. They won't usually take someone for just a couple of weeks. It takes too long to teach and train them before they can even begin to work safely in the lab.
OK. So, where does that leave you. There's only one other option--and all that requires is a computer and internet access. You can do a biotechnology research project online by using freely available software from various websites such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) that allows you to do targeted searches for specific genes and proteins and do several kinds of analyses all digitally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
This is a valid form of research, but it does require a lot of learning, thinking and technical know-how. I would do some reading on AD and watch some lectures about it on youtube until you understand how scientists think the disease begins and progresses. Then we can help you to try and come up with some candidate proteins or brain cells that are likely to be involved and you can propose a hypothesis that you can test online using protein analysis software along with DNA sequence data. This will be difficult because a lot of the technical jargon you won't understand. If I was there to explain it to you as you went along it would help, but I'm afraid that's not possible. But I will be here to answer questions.
Think about all this and let us know if you still want to pursue AD as a research project. Talk to your teacher about doing a software-driven project. It's not hands-on science but it is still valuable if done correctly.
Good luck!
Sybee