Two students will present an article from the scientific literature per class period.
Sign up for presentation date is first-come first-served.
Journal club articles must be approved by Dr. Matthews before a date will be assigned to a student.
Once you have selected an article, you may change to another article if you get Dr. Matthews' permission.
You select a relevant scientific article from the literature from the last 5 years (2002-2007)
Selection criteria:
Article reports a new method or important improvement in mass spectrometry. Examples:
Article shows new ion trap design to trap and perform MS/MS experiments on really high mass ions
Article shows how to improve mass resolution of time of flight by adding new widget
Article describes using mass spectrometry to solve an important problem
The article should have some relevance to science in general or suggest greater applications beyond a very narrow or limited scope
Don't select an application article that does a single highly specific task. E.g. a paper that uses mass spectrometry to identify "one protein", and that is all.
Don't select an article that defines something obscure that is of little interest to most people
What should be covered in your Journal Club presentation:
Provide background. You need to introduce and state the problem being addressed
You should provide both chemical/biochemical background as well as mass spec background as required for the audience to understand the topic
You may provide/discuss older or other articles for the background section
Discuss the methods & experimental design used
Tell how they did what they did (and don't forget why) -- this section may blend into both background and results
Discuss the presented results
Don't necessarily talk about everything in the article; focus on what you think is important
Discuss the paper's "discussion". That is define in your mind what is important both from a mass spec point of view and from a science point of view.
Include:
The authors thoughts about what is important about the work reported
Your thoughts about what is important
Critique: during your discussion of both results and discussion, point out limitations and problems that you have identified with the paper and why
Use overheads of figures & tables from the article in your presentation:
There is both a projection display device that can either be hooked to
A lighted flat screen overhead device that takes both transparencies and (better yet) regular pieces of paper. This route is the easiest route to go.
A PC and a hook-up for a laptop. This route requires you to make a PDF or PowerPoint file.
Present as your first overhead the title page of the article so that title, authors & affiliations, journal etc. are clear
Xerox the figures/tables you need from the article at a suitable enlarged size, cut out, paste on a piece of paper, and add any comments you need for your overheads. You do not need to prepare hand outs of these materials.
Prepare any other overheads as required, but try to work from existing literature figures & tables -- this is not a topic lecture, but a review of a literature article.
Pick an article that you can cover in 30 min time
Be prepared to stop frequently and answer questions from the audience
Questions indicate interest from the audience in what you are discussing and they point out any uncertainty and confusion.
However, you must not let the questions lead you off track.
Dr. Matthews must approve your choice of article prior to presentation
You can either
send a PDF file (almost every article should be available as a PDF) by e-mail to me or
bring a xerox copy of the article to class for me & each member of the audience
You must also send/provide each member of the class a copy of the article(s) at least 2 days prior to the presentation date — best done by e-mail.
Good journals to look for mass spectrometry articles:
Top-tier journals that will have articles on mass spectrometry with a biological focus (however, it's harder to find articles in these journals because they comprise a smaller fraction of the total):
Nature & the related Nature journals (e.g. Nature Biotech, ...)
See my web page under MS Links. Near the bottom is a list of journals that publish lots of articles on mass spectrometry. All of these journals are available through the UVM web.
