BIOL 302 Lab Manual

By: Charles A. Schumpert, Margaret Cirtain, Amanda Zeigler, Megan Mittelstadt

Edited by: Halimah Adesunkanmi, Noah Leever, Harshita Negi, Tiasa Sen, Tori Peacock

Figure 1. Scientist examining a tissue culture plate with culture medium (for use in growing cells in culture). Credit Unsplash and National Cancer Institute.

Welcome to BIOL 302 Lab!

We're happy you've chosen to take our lab! We cover some amazing topics in this course that will help you better visualize cellular and molecular biology (along with teaching you useable skills that will be priceless in your career in the field of biology).

This site will provide you all the material you need to succeed in our course. Note that this is all completely free of charge! We believe that educational resources shouldn't be locked behind the high cost of textbooks.

This is an example of an Open Education Resource (OER). For more information on OERs and the movement to make higher education even more accessible and inclusive check out this link:

OER Commons

So, what's this course about?

In this course we will be using cell and molecular biology methods to examine basic cellular responses. The course will be divided into two sections, the first consists of experiments and activities to introduce molecular techniques, specifically cellular staining with May-Grunwald/Giemsa stains, RNA isolation, reverse transcription, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), gel electrophoresis, and zymography. We'll also teach you how to properly prepare, draft, and write a comprehensive cellular and molecular biology lab report.

In the second half of the course, you'll have an exhilariting experiential learning opportunity: to design and execute your own research project! You'll work with your instructor and a group of your classmates to research your ideas, form your hypotheses, conduct experiments, collect data, analyse it, and present the amazing work in a poster during a 302L poster session! This project includes a group proposal and poster presentation to showcase the work we'll be doing in the lab.

Our model system will be the human leukemia cell line HL-60 and we will reproduce findings described in the paper Fibronectin-mediated Cell Adhesion Is Required for Induction of 92-kDa Type IV Collagenase/Gelatinase (MMP-9) Gene Expression during Macrophage Differentiation” by Bei Xie et al. (1998) J. Biol. Chem. 273 (19), 11576-11582.

Figure 2. Human colorectal cancer cells treated with a topoisomerase inhibitor and an inhibitor of the protein kinase ATR (ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related), a drug combination under study as a cancer therapy. Cell nuclei are stained blue; the chromosomal protein histone gamma-H2AX marks DNA damage in red and foci of DNA replication in green. Created by Yves Pommier, Rozenn Josse, 2014. Credit Unsplash and National Cancer Institute.

Collapsible Text?

Trying to read more information in a particular chapter in the lab manual? We've created collapsibly text to help ease your focus while reading the chapters. Simple tap or click on the bolded title and the text will expand for our reading pleasure. When finished reading, tap or click again to have the text collapse, making it easier to focus on other content on the page.

Google Docs?

The majority of the exercises and protocols for lab are in a Google Doc within our lab manual site. This allows flexibility with the protocols. In a face-to-face lab meeting session, I highly recommend downloading a copy of the protocol and printing off a copy so we can take notes and collect data in an easy manner.

Let's get started!

Use the links on the left of the page to navigate to the chapter of your choice. Enjoy!