MINI-GRANT PROPOSAL

A grant proposal advances a set of experiments to answer a scientific question. It is typically

sent to granting agencies and reviewed (anonymously) by other colleagues (or "peers"). Grants
need to be crisp, clear, and should be written for biologists who are not necessarily experts in
the field. Most proposals describe a 3-5 year experimental course. Yours is a "mini"-grant
proposal and should, therefore, describe only one or two questions and a tightly related set of
experiments that could conceivably be performed in 6 months.

You should start writing your proposal as soon as possible. The best proposals are carefully
thought out and well researched. They are also written sharp and to the point. For this
assignment, a maximum of 4 single spaced pages is recommended. All proposals, regardless
of length, tend to follow the following format or some variation thereof.

0. TITLE AND PROPOSER (AUTHOR)

I. OBJECTIVE (OR AIMS): Half a page

What do you propose to do? More essentially, What is your hypothesis?
This part outlines your questions and hypotheses.

II. SIGNIFICANCE (OR BACKGROUND): 1-1.5 pages

Why do you want to do this? How will these findings advance the field? and/or help society?
This part should describe the basis for your interest and should persuade the reader that the
proposed experiments are important for our understanding.

III. EXPERIMENTAL Approach: 1-1.5 pages

How do you propose to do this? This section should include an opening paragraph summarizing
your approach/strategy, followed by a more detailed description of your approaches. It can
include the methods or they can be outlined in a separate section.

A note on methods: You don't have to be unnecessarily detailed. In this proposal, methods are a
description of the assay(s) you will use to test your theory. For example: How are you going to
measure mutation? How are you going to clone your gene or construct your mutant? If you are
doing a time course, provide a range of times; if you are doing a dose response, provide a
range of doses.

IV. CONCLUDING STATEMENT: brief! Half page

Here you can reiterate the importance of your question, discuss how you may interpret the data
and pursue interesting findings.

V. REFERENCES

Full mini-proposals are due in one month from the day you received these guidelines by e-mail.