Links between Neuroscience and Genomics
My question is - is it effective/ inspiring/efficient/rational/relevant to study nervous system and problems associated with it by using genomics techniques ()
I will argue here that
I believe that
I will ...
"An additional, sometimes unspoken, impediment to the more widespread adoption of ‘- omics’ fields (‘omics’) in neuroscience research is an underlying tension between the hypothesis-testing approach applied in the typical neurobiology laboratory
and the discovery-based disciplines of genetics, genomics, and proteomics (Box 1)."
The omics view is that an understanding of the organization and structure of the genome and the high-throughput measurements of the relationships of its elements, or gene products, provides a systematic basis on which t
understand biological processes.Furthermore, significant value is placed on resource building and data sharing.
These approaches, which provide a new framework for the rapidly growing fields of neurogenetics, neurogenomics and systems biology, and the challenges that accompany them, are the subject of this Review.
We discuss the value of data sharing and provide some key examples of neuroinformatics-based or omics-based resources, highlighting areas in which genetic and functional genomic approaches have brought new biological insight to different areas of neuroscience.
We conclude with a discussion of the new frontiers in biological networks and systems biology.
1. Structure: essays should make an argument: your essay should have a point and reach a conclusion, even if tentative, and you should try to convince the reader that your point is correct.
This is the most important single point in writing a good essay. It will help you make it well organized, and well-written. Clarity of thought and argument provide the necessary basis for a clear writing style.
2. It is key to back up each crucial point that you make with data. Don't just cite the study, but briefly, describe its key result(s) in a sentence or two, and explain, explicitly, why this supports your point
Any statements of nonobvious fact (e.g. "monkeys can follow gaze", or "dopamine is necessary for motor function") should be followed by a reference (even if only to a textbook).
3. Proof: Note that the logic of scientific discovery is that of generating a list of possibilities (postulating hypotheses) and then doing experiments to test them. We proceed by rejecting false hypotheses, rather than proving true ones.
(What counts as a good argument, or a solid conclusion? There is room for considerable creativity here, depending on the topic. It is easier to say what does not count as a good conclusion.
For example, you should never just review a study or studies, and conclude that "more work is necessary".
More work is always necessary, and YOUR work in this essay is to reach a more substantive conclusion than that.
A recapitulation of some experiments with no substantive conclusions does not constitute a good essay, however accurate.)
