MSc Biological Sciences

Induction (part I) - basic laboratory guidance, including health and safety regulations, keeping a laboratory notebook. Biological Safety, Laboratory Health & Safety, risk assessment and management. Induction (part II) - Manual handling in a laboratory, including dilutions and solution preparation.  

Workshop 1 - Staining techniques: histological staining, immunohistochemistry.

Workshop 2 - Nucleic acid techniques: PCR, Real-time PCR and qPCR.

Workshop 3 - Protein handling techniques: Protein extraction/purification and analysis, including SDS-PAGE and western blotting.

Workshop 4 - scientific report writing (including results, discussion, figures, figures, figure legends and referencing).  

Students will complete a total of FOUR workshops including both parts of the Induction, Workshop 4 (both compulsory) and two further workshops from workshops 1-3. 

Equip students with the theoretical understanding and practical skills relating to laboratory-based biomedical techniques to enable them to undertake, interpret and accurately record experimental research in the biomedical sciences.

Knowledge and understanding

•    Develop awareness of current best practice in laboratory health and safety and understand how to keep themselves and those around them safe within a laboratory environment.
•    Develop an understanding of the principles of a range of practical techniques used in the biomedical context and understand how to employ and adapt these within their own research applications.

Intellectual skills

•    Develop critical understanding of the limitations of particular techniques and their applications.
•    Develop an understanding of how to solve problems arising from unexpected results.

Practical skills

•    Acquire the practical skills to enable them to follow written standard laboratory methods and achieve expected outcomes.
•    Acquire technical competence in a range of biomedical and computational techniques.
•    Learn best practice for recording experimental procedures and outcomes in a standard laboratory notebook.

Transferable skills and personal qualities

•    Be able to carry out laboratory techniques alone or in partnership with others safely and efficiently.
•    Demonstrate the ability to record experimental procedures in written form and to interpret experimental results obtained.
 

The learning and teaching processes will take the form of lectures, practical laboratory classes, laboratory demonstrations and e-learning (completion of on-line formative assessments).

All students MUST attend Induction Part I, Induction Part II, Workshop 4 and two further workshops from workshops 1 - 3 to complete the unit. (Total of FOUR workshops).

Induction (part I) will not be assessed but students are required to complete the online quiz prior to entering the lab. Workshop 4 will not be assessed but attendance is compulsory.

For BOTH of the other two workshops attended, from Workshops 1-3:(a) Pre-lab online MCQ test- 10% weighting, average of two tests (b) Post-lab online MCQ test- 10% weighting, average of two tests. For ONE of the workshops 1-3 (chosen by the student): A written practical report, 1000 words, containing theoretical overview of the technique/s; results and interpretation of results obtained; and appropriate reference to published literature. This has an 80% weighting. Students must accurately record the results obtained in each lab workshop in a laboratory notebook.