HigherBiology

Paper Presentation Guidelines You will be presenting your assigned paper using PowerPoint slides.

If you have any trouble understanding your paper PRIOR to your presentation, please come and talk to me about it. Do not wait until the day before your presentation to come and talk to me, as I might not be available – plan in advance! You must make an effort to try to understand the techniques and results before you come to talk to me, but if you have done so I am very willing to help.

You must start preparing in advance of your presentation date! Primary literature is difficult to read, so start reading your paper now!

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Sections of your Presentation:

I. Introduction • State the main (very general) question that the author is trying to address. • Review background for this main question. You will need to start very general

and then get more specific to the particular topic. This will require that you look at and present literature that is not in the actual “introduction” section of the primary paper you are presenting. Use figures and information from review papers related to the topic you are presenting (which might be referred to in the introduction of the paper). In addition, you may want to use figures from the textbook. You will need to describe the general topic, relevant definitions, and the specific topic and its importance.

• The introduction/background should provide the audience with an understanding of what is known about this topic and how the question that is being addressed by the current study fits into what is already known.

• Don’t make this section too short! Don’t be afraid of reviewing topics that we have gone over in class or that you think everyone already knows. It is likely that the undergrads in the class need more background than you think.

• End this section by defining the hypotheses that the paper intended to test. The hypotheses are more specific than the main question.

II. Results (integrate methods in with the results) Review the results. Go through all of the figures in the paper, and have each on a slide so that you can go through them with the class. As you present each figure, tell the class the following 4 things:

1. Question – why they did the experiment a. What hypothesis did this experiment test?

2. Experiment – what they did a. What methods were used in this experiment? b. Please explain the methods used in each experiment. This will often

require additional diagrams and slides (that are not in the primary paper) to explain the method used. Discuss methods in detail, especially if the method is not common or if it is complicated. Remember your audience -

undergraduates often are not familiar even with routine experimental methods.

3. Results – what they found a. Go through all parts of the figure (explain x and y axes) and tell what each

graph, blot, etc. shows. That is, what is the result? b. Are there proper control experiments?

4. Answer to the question and its implications – what do the results mean a. Do the authors interpret the results correctly? That is, do the data support

the conclusions that the authors make?

III. Discussion • What are the author’s interpretations of the results? Do you agree or disagree? • Were the hypotheses that the paper intended to test actually tested? Are there

any other better approaches to test these hypotheses (that you can think of)? • Why are these results significant (or not significant)? What overall contribution

does this paper make to the field of developmental biology? • Please also bring up any other points that you think were important that were

made in the discussion portion of the paper. • Finally, what new questions are raised by this paper and what are some future

experiments that could be conducted on this topic?