Project Ideas/Help

[GeneD]

I have this project for school. I’m studying biochemistry and we have to come up with an idea for a research project (spanning 2-3 years) solving a problem or developing a novel product. It has to be biochemistry related (anything with genes or bacteria will probably cover it) and it has to be completely original. I am pretty badly stuck on trying to think of something, so I thought I’d post and see if anyone out there might be able to spark off some ideas. You don’t really have to know much/anything about biochem, you might just post something that triggers an idea.

I’ll give some examples: genetic modification; e.g. making blue roses, an instant test to detect bacterial contamination in hospitals, bacteria that secretes a protein that might be missing in a disease.

Please help me out and post any problem you might think of that may be solved with a scientific approach. Any interesting links are also welcome.

[Dante]

You're twenty-two... Hence, this is for a university and not a school. I have advice... but it is not my own and the author of it is equally as contreversial within science. And I don't worry about spelling or grammarz whilst on teh netz.

-".6 Don't choose your initial thesis objective" -James D. Watson, Avoid Boring (Other) People
(I will note that I believe his statements concerning race from the way I heard them sound like one the stupidist statements I've ever heard... but the advice he gave above seemed to be particularly true and so I think it should be passed on)

In other words, for a project that will take 2-3 years, find a young (if you want to work on the edge of your field) advisor willing to give you a project that is both feasible within the time frame stated and potent enough to satisfy the requirements for your project.

I will add to this,

-Don't choose your thesis objective from the results given to you by a group of friends on a casual internet web forum.

OF COURSE! If you're looking for a project that you will likely never complete within 2-3 years but just want us to throw things at you I should probobly satisfy your desires as well...

IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT O' DOOM
ABANDON ALL HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE!

Highly deceptive cheery advice: You should work on the problem of protein folding from ab initio calculations... likely using or building a program like VASP to program the quantum interactions between the molecules in an attempt to predict secondary et al, of a polypeptide sequence based solely on the sequence and environmental information. If a program is required, I highly recommend using Python, because Python is the bomb!

Then when you're done with that you can find the origin of homochirality within amino acids! Personally I feel the best location to study for this would be to investigate its possible origin from circularly polarized starlight. Of course, once again high amounts of computations will likely be involved, so once again... I SUGGEST PYTHON FTW! !!!!

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Would the study of disease transmission work?

If so, I have an idea for you. =)

[GeneD]

Yes, this is for varsity or college or whatever you call it. It is definately not for my thesis though. Call it a practice run in setting up a project proposal for a long term research project. It is a big deal though since it basically constitutes one of my subjects this year. Unfortunately I can not be "given" the project by someone in my field.

Having cleared that up somewhat, MSP, I'm not sure what aspect of disease transmission study you might mean, but please tell me anyway what you're thinking.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Ever heard of Toms Shoes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toms_shoes

How about seeing how effective giving out shoes to developing nations are in terms of decreasing the rate of Podoconiosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantiasis)? (May be some disturbing images) Toms is a company that claims that shoes make the disease 100% Preventable. I question this claim very much.

[Ingemar]

I have three words:

Literature, Literature, Literature.

Find a topic that interests you, study the latest literature about said topic and develop a project based on, or continuing, the results.

I work in a commercial/industry and I can tell you that a great deal of the work we do internally is based on things that we come across in Journal Club. Granted, I personally do not start major projects but they do get handed down to me. (Note that projects and programs in my company's case are big things that require crosstalk between several persons in different departments).

Also note that sometimes projects can arise "organically." I was given a task to test SDMutagenized SNP's in Tubia spudderosis* on various levels of selection. What surprised me was that one of the SNP's expected to grow on selective media would not even grow on non-selecting media, which created its own project in a sense. I had to repeat the experiment adding various vitamins to supplement the media and tried incubating at a lower temperature to see if those conditions would allow my cells with this SNP to grow. After many repeated attempts, I concluded that the SNP was, if not toxic, not worth the effort to continue forward with it.

All this would not have been possible without 1). something I was previously working/interested with and 2). scientific literature/data. I had learned from a colleague that the same SNP in a different organism was likewise toxic and learned from him the various conditions in which it might complement.

*There of course is no such organism. Given the semi-confidential nature of my work I had to substitute things and speak in very broad terms.