1. (less than 20minutes)
Use Pubmed in NCBI's Entrez to find an article written by Carl R. Woese (famous scientist, co-discoverer of the Archaea), published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with the words primary kingdoms in the title of the paper. Try to use Boolean operators and field tags; if you cannot recall the tags, use the Preview/Index tool.
What query did find the 1977 article?
How many related articles are linked to this article?
When was the most recent published?
2. (ca. 5 minutes) (Note: Entrez' pulldown menus do not work in Safari -- use Firefox (inside the MCB221 folder on your deskop) or internet explorer)
In NCBI's Entrez/pubmed find the earliest paper co-authored by Senejani and Gogarten. What is the topic of the paper?
Display the abstract of this paper and click on the book link (see "Links" on top right of abstract). Items in the abstract that are covered in the reference book turn into hyperlinks. If you need more information on any of the items follow these links. Follow the link "self-splicing". It gives you a list of books that cover this topic. Select the results of the "Molecular Biology of the Cell" book by Alberts et al. and follow the second link to a diagram. How many groups of self-splicing introns are there?
3. (ca. 5 minutes)
Dr. Gogarten seems obsessed by an important protein called ATP synthase. Is he interested in anything else? How many articles has he published that are NOT related to the ATP synthase OR ATPase?
What query did you assemble?
How many articles did you find?
4. (10 minutes)
For a scientist of your choice (e.g., your advisor, or someone who publishes in your field of interest), using ISI's Web of Science database (note: there might be a limit on the number of simultaneous users, if you don't get in, try again later), search for articles that cite this author (i.e., use a cited reference search).
Which was the most cited article?
How often was it cited?
When was the most recent citation?
Did you find any interesting article?
Was this article available online?
5. (5 minutes)
Using Entrez search for articles co-authored by Taiz and Gogarten.
How many articles did you retrieve?
Using the display selector in the second header bar, display all nuleotide and all protein links. How many did you find?
Do all the different protein sequences really refer to different sequences?
What might explain your finding?
6. (10 minutes)
To what domain, phylum/kingdom and family does Thermoplasma belong? (Use the Taxonomy link) How many protein sequences are available for Thermoplasma acidophilum, how many are available for the genus Thermoplasma? (In the taxonomy browser go to Thermoplasma and check protein in the header)