Biochemistry / Histone Protein Modification - Purdue University

Abstract

The researcher is conducting research on the glial and neuronal cells of drosophila larvae, a genus of flies. She is examining changes in gene expression when nuclei lose histone-modifying complexes. The stages of her research involve a long period of methodology development, a shorter data collection period, and then data analysis. Various aspects of the data analysis are outsourced to facilities at the university. The lab notebook contains written documentation of all experiments and trials and links to data, versions of analysis and images, databases, and versions of the developing journal article. Therefore, keeping an organized electronic lab notebook is of high importance for the researcher. The centrality of the lab notebook to the function of the lab means that it is very important for her students to be trained to properly document their experiments using her lab notebook structures and protocols. There is a potential issue of being able to link some of the data files to the notebook because they are very large and must be stored at the analysis facility on campus.