A student should be able to articulate what basic (or fundamental), applied, or societal issues their research will address to both a lay audience and a professional audience.

Relevance:

Detail: A good research project:

Is related to a big picture question of interest to the broader scientific community

The Vision and Change initiative identified 5 big ideas in biology, i. Evolution, ii. Structure and Function, iii. Information flow, exchange and storage, iv. Pathways and transformations of energy and matter, and v. Systems, as well as identifying 6 attributes of a science literate student: i. Ability to apply the process of science, ii. Ability to use quantitative reasoning, iii. Ability to use modeling and simulation, iv. Ability to tap into the interdisciplinary nature of science, v. Ability to communicate and collaborate, and vi. Ability to understand the relationship between science and society.

Can be related to a big picture question of interest to society in general.

You should be able to relate your research project to one, or more, of the five big ideas of biology. During the course of your project you will use the six attributes of a science literate student, and in particular, you may want to think about how your project may be related to the relationship between science and society – is it in any way related to medicine (drug design etc) or to other societal problems (toxic waste, food supply, biomaterials, socio-economic disparities, etc)

Addresses a foundational issue in a particular area of the relevant science

- in this case, foundational concepts of protein structure-function relationships

Is original and addresses a gap in knowledge in the discipline

The Big Picture of any project should address two questions: Why should society in general care about this research? and What does it contribute to the scientific understanding of protein structure function relationships?

Big Picture aspects of the first question often relate to how the research might eventually contribute societal issues such as how could the results lead to understanding of adaptation to particular environmental or habitat conditions, or will understanding the model system contribute to biomedical or biotechnological advances.

Big Picture aspects of the second question are those that extend to proteins and enzymes in general, that you explore with a model system, ie the protein you are studying. What you learn in the model system should be applicable to proteins in general. Such aspects are often related to the appropriate foundational concepts of structure and function, such as size and complexity of macromolecules, factors that determine structure, the role of non-covalent interactions in structure and function, how are dynamic aspects of structure related to function and paradigms of activity regulation.