IMM 301 Immunology Discussion Course
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Course Directors: Shiv Pillai and Lydia Lynch
Immunology 301 is much more than a course, it is a year-long compilation of seminars, discussions, and lunches designed to give students exposure to research topics in immunology.
Wednesday's Schedule
12 - 1 PM: Lunch with invited speaker and G1 Class
2 - 3:30 PM: Class discussion lead by a different member of the IMM faculty every week, centered around the seminar speaker's research
4 - 5 PM: Immunology Seminar
Course Requirements
Fall Semester
Prior to each Wednesday afternoon seminar, the speaker provides a set of 2-3 references. Students are expected to read all the references and the faculty leading the discussion class will select one of the articles to be written up and reviewed by the students and discussed in detail in class.
Points for students to address in their 1-2 page review of the article:
- Do the experiments described in this paper test a hypothesis (if so, how would this hypothesis be phrased), or could this work be classified as descriptive?
- What is the state of this particular field at the moment of publication (i.e. what is the background of the work more generally?)
- What is the methodology employed to address the questions asked, and is this methodology appropriate? Are there alternative methods that would be equally useful?
- Do the data presented warrant the conclusions made by the authors?
- Are there additional experiments/controls that would have strengthened the authors' conclusions?
- What would you consider a logical extension of the work presented?
- On the whole, would you consider this paper a significant contribution to the field?
Spring Semester
Two students will be required to write a Specific Aims page of a grant for future studies based on the speaker’s work. This will be presented to the class and discussed with the other students and the Faculty leader
Two students work independently for every session. They each imagine they are the seminar speaker, look up any of their papers and based on those, they think about a research direction, and they come up with a (One-page) Specific Aims Page for a 5 year grant. Each student presents 2-3 slides and has about 40 minutes and other students and the faculty are expected to interrupt and critique them.
Arial 11, with 0.5” margins on all sides is the maximum space allowed. Ideally put In a schematic, and typically your page will have 3 independent aims. You should be creative, answer questions that are important and plan to do something that will have “impact”.
Maybe RNA polymerase has never been identified in the coconut - but just identifying RNA polymerase in coconuts is unlikely to be considered to be “impactful"
1) Must have an OVERARCHING HYPOTHESIS to be tested for the whole application. If your hypothesis is that “NK cells do NOT emerge from the thymus”, your experimental design should be able to nail whether this is true or NOT true.
2) Each aim should essentially pose a question (a hypothesis) and the proposed experiments should either prove of refute each hypothesis
So Design Experiments that you can defend and which will provide clear yes/no answers
3) Each Aim should be independent of the next. So if Aim One is aimed at identifying whether Regulatory T cells in the meninges express Protein X, the second Aim cannot ask about how DNA methylation regulates Protein X expression in Regulatory T cells in the meninges.
End with a one line impact statement.