Assessment due this thursday

End of course summary

Type: Report
Learning Objectives Assessed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Due Date:
5 Nov 09
Weight: 20%
Task Description: Each students will present a 10-20 page written summary of what they learnt in the course.
This will be broken down into 5-10 key ideas and will include a relevant figure for each
Criteria & Marking: Summary will be marked based on clarity and accuracy.

Course profile

I had problem accessing the course profile on the UQ website and so have uploaded it here.

Tuesday Meeting?

Hi all,

Ross says that 20th November should be possible for the exam - he says he can start us off at 10 (and have the exam run 10am - 12pm). Is this still ok for everyone?

Also - do we still want to have a session on Tuesday? If so, maybe we should do any of the marking and peer evaluation things that we still have left to do and bring them on Tuesday so we can get all the rest of the assessment except for the exam all finished up and finalised.

Kristen

Late post for presenting topic...

Hi guys, sorry I am posting this so late... I forgot last night :S Am really really tired, so we'll see how the presentation goes. Nevertheless, the topic is a cool G-protein, which has been biophysically analysed. Its awesome. The paper is "Biophysical Analysis of the Interaction of Rab6a GTPase with Its Effector Domains."

Also, sorry I haven't found a paper for discussion time this week yet... so, to be continued I guess.

Alex.

The rules of disorder or why disorder rules

Hi everyone,

Apologies for not posting this sooner. The paper I have chosen for this week is called "The rules of disorder or why disorder rules". It focuses on a group of proteins found in eukaryotic cells that don't have a unique three-dimensional structure, but are still functional. These proteins adopt different folds when they interact with different partners - so in essence, their function defines the structure of the protein.

I'd never heard of these kind of proteins before, so was interested to learn something more. The paper itself doesn't focus on just one protein, but gives a few different examples.

See you all at the session!

(Also - at Tomas, who I'm assuming has done up the poll that has appeared - I can't possibly answer a question that asks two questions in one with only one poll option! Have two polls for two questions :P )

Structure, Property and Function, Relationships

Hey all,

I got some exciting news on the weekend. I have been offered a rural scholar ship at Griffith gold coast ^_^ which was my first preference. I'm quite pleased but not have 101 little practical details to work out.

For this weeks discussion topic I wasn't particularly clear on what direction we were taking the "structure, property, function relationships" topic (although our discussions often seem to choose their own direction on the day anyway :P). I cant remember if we were thinking proteins in particular or anything that fits under that heading such as cell shape and structure and their specific function.

Either way the paper I have chosen for for this week is on a protein which is a transcription inhibitor in barley but its general structure is found in many plants. Its expression in barley results in inhibition of growth of two side seed spikes which apparently makes self seeding of the plant more successfull. If this gene is removed however crop yield is tripled but the head are fatter and well likely to successfully self seed. This high yield barley is not a new thing and has been found to be used around the world in different cultures, most of which discovered it by selective breeding.

Diamagnetic levitation of biological organisms

Either nobody knows, cares or had the time to answer the question posed in the previous post, so I'll do it here:

More diamagnetic levitation movies...

The 'disproof' of magnetic levitation only applies for static charges. This video gives a quick demo of how you can test this yourself (I've never heard the audio track, so don't know if it's any good).

If you have a big enough magnetic field for its ρ/χ, you can levitate pretty much any living thing. Armed with this knowledge, biophysicists can conduct useful research like this and this.