Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, I'm doing this project for a school science fair and I need to know what I should collect for data. I need to know what numbers I could use for data. I need to have graphs as well. Please help!
Thanks!

2kk2 wrote:Hi, I'm doing this project for a school science fair and I need to know what I should collect for data. I need to know what numbers I could use for data. I need to have graphs as well. Please help!
Thanks!

Hi,
According to https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p008.shtml,

It would be helpful if you refer to the following sources:

NCBI, 2007. "A Science Primer," National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) [accessed October 16, 2007] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/primer/snps.html
ORNL, 2007. "SNP Fact Sheet," Human Genome Project Information [accessed October 16, 2007] http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... snps.shtml
ORNL, 2006. "The Gene Gateway Workbook," Genome Management Information System at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee [accessed October 16, 2007] http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... kbook1.pdf
Moult, Yue, Melamud, Zahl, 2005. SNPs3D [accessed October 16, 2007] http://www.snps3d.org/

Specifically, what disease will you research about? If you are having trouble, go on the data base, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=OMIM, that provides a comprehensive guideline from choosing your disease to analyzing with sample numbers. I would suggest you to use this database for data collection.

Feel free to ask any questions you have and good luck!
-Grace

Thanks for the help! I am studying Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and I have followed the entire process that is on the Science Buddies website, but when I put the protein sequence into the Sequence Smart website it doesn't really help on finding a mutation...

Do you have any suggestions for that?

Hello 2kk2,
Thanks for coming to us for help. You mentioned on a previous post you are looking at Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. What protein did you try using with the SMART website? Have you tried looking for SNPs that might be associated with your disease? I will need more details on what you have tried that has not worked to help you further.
Best,
Veronica

Thank you for helping me!
Here is the link to the protein I chose, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/Q86VZ1.1
When I get the FASTA format and do the SequenceSmart it only comes up with this, http://smart.embl-heidelberg.de/smart/show_motifs.pl
I do not understand what to do next after the Sequence Smart.
Do you have any suggestions on what to do next? What numbers should I collect for data to base my results and conclusion on?
Thanks!

Hi 2kk2,
Before I go on to help you in detail with this project I would like to make sure you understand that this project is more of an information-search activity. There will be no "numbers" for you to collect at the end of your project. Your "data" will be describing how and why you went from the disease of interest to finding a gene/mutation associated with that disease to establishing sequence-structure relationships between the protein and the mutation. Establishing structure-function relationships between the protein and the mutation is nothing more than coming up with educated guesses as to what effects the mutation of interest could be affecting the protein's function. You would document your research and discovery process and report this as your data, illustrating very vividly how useful computer science and medicine can be very collaborative. At the very end, once you have hypothesized about the effect your mutation of interest could be having, you could always try to find in the actual scientific literature whether people have tested for this and found it to be the case.

If you are wanting to have a project where you do more hands-on stuff (us scientists would call it "wet work" or "bench work") I would suggest you pick another project. What do you think?

Best Regards,
Veronica