Design of scientific projects

• A major requirement for an experimental project is having a

precise hypothesis (question) to be address by the experiments.
Additionally, you have to consider the following questions:
-Will the hypothesis be significant?
-Will the comprobation of the hypothesis lead to new knowledge? And,
therefore, drive the field forward or accomplishes an important clinical
goal?
• There are many possible hypothesis but very few will be
worthwhile to investigate.

• Methodology used for the experiments:

-What biological system should you use?
e.g.: cell lines, rodents, exvivo experiments, yeast, …
-What measurements?
e.g.: mRNA, proteins, …
-What treatment or perturbation?
e.g.. genetic deficiency, available drugs…
 Design of scientific projects
• Include positive and negative controls:
- They are needed to differentiate between a real negative result from an
error in the methodology or malfunctioning of the reagents
-Always include positive and negative controls, regardles of the difficulty
of the experiment

• Replicates:
-It is needed at least 3 replicates to carry on statistics and perform proper
statistical inference. However, the more replicates you use the more
robust the conclusions will be. The number of replicates some times are
limited by the price of the experiment.
e.g.. high-throughput experiments (microarrays, RNA-seq) are
expensives and therefore, you need a robust statistical approach
to interpret your results. In contrast, working with cell lines makes
more feasible the inclusion of higher number or replicates in
your experiments