ANAT2341 Lab 9

Stem Cell Paper Preparation

As part of the assessment for this course, you will give a 15 minutes journal club presentation in the next lab. For this you will in your current student group discuss a recent (published after 2010) original research article (not a review!) on stem cell biology or technology.

Please note that the best articles are found in journals with the highest impact factors: Nature, Science, Cell, Cell Stem Cell, etc). Please contact Annemiek in case you are at a loss, and she will help you find one.

Send Annemiek Beverdam your selected paper at the end of today's class by email (A.Beverdam@unsw.edu.au).

During the presentation it works best if one student discusses the introduction, the second the results section, and the third the discussion section. Please note that one slide takes about 1 minute to talk through. So do not use more than 15 to 20 slides total. Please read through attached document for tips for how to prepare a good presentation.

You will receive a group mark based on presentation content, insight and comprehension, and presentation and slide style.

Presentation Hints for Students

• Do not use cheat sheets and do not learn your presentation literally by heart. Make sure that you know and understand what you want to get across. Explain carefully. Use your slides as cheat sheets. Make eye contact with your audience and get a feel for whether they understand your story.
• Keep your presentation short and concise. Not every detail of the article needs to be discussed in the presentation, but limit it to the bare minimum that is required to get the main message of the article across. For instance, do not go into too much detail in method sections. Not all nitty-gritty detail of the results needs to be discussed. The less info your audience has to take in, the higher the chance that they will understand your story.
• Don’t just put your slides up while you are presenting, but talk your audience carefully through them. Slides are an indispensable part of the presentation. Each item on your slides should be relevant and addressed and highlighted with pointer, fingers, stick. Slide shows are indispensable for a presentation, as is the presenter. They should support and enhance a presentation, they should aid your audience in understanding.
• Talk your audience through each of the figures on your slides. Figures may be obvious to you, but not to your audience unless you explain them carefully. So explain what experiment has been carried out, and what is displayed in the figure:
  • on the X and Y-axes
  • what the bars represent in diagrams
  • the tissues/cell types displayed
  • the bands on Western blot, RNA and DNA gels,
  • What colors represent colors in immunostainings, etc etc.
• Please note that you only need to highlight this experimental detail that is necessary to get the main message of the figure across.
• Conclude a (results) slide with a concluding/summarizing remark that should cover the main message of this particular slide.
• Annotate the figures in your presentation carefully but sparingly. Label panels, axes, images etc so that figures are self-explicatory.
• Do not use too much text on your slides.
• To stay in control the presenter should flick through the slide show. Not another member of the team.
• If you didn’t understand the articles in depth, read a recent review or even go back to text books to acquire the basic knowledge. Also, if you discuss results of a crucial experiment but do not understand the technology. Please go back to the original references or your text books to read up on this technology. You should be on top of everything you say or write up in your slides.
• Stick to your time. Don’t make too many slides. Each slide should take about a minute on average to talk through. Try to avoid acronyms and abbreviation.