Plant Science

Course Content

The duration of the course is 12 months, full time, and consists of taught components together with two 20-week research projects.

The taught course includes:

Advanced courses: normally in Plant Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology.

Research projects: The 20-week research projects will normally be based in the laboratories of Plant Science Group staff (see above) and will be focused on their areas of research. Some projects may additionally involve other MCSB staff, for instance in the Sir Henry Wellcome Functional Genomics Facility. The projects are chosen to reflect students’ interests and the skills they wish to acquire and are of sufficient duration to enable real scientific progress to be made.

Taught Component

The taught courses are usually shared with other postgraduates and undergraduates and are of two types: Preliminary courses and Advanced courses.

Advanced Courses

All students will take two small-group teaching modules or ‘Options’ (approx. 30 contact hours over 5 weeks), which are also attended by final year undergraduate students. MRes students will normally take the Plant Molecular Biology course in Semester 1, and Plant Biotechnology in Semester 2. The first part of the Plant Molecular Biology course is specifically designed for MRes students and differs from that offered to undergraduates.

The Plant Molecular Biology course will include:

• Strategies for isolating genes and determining gene function in plants: genome analysis, mutant isolation, identifying genes corresponding to mutants.
• Methods for the study of gene regulation: assays of transcripts and proteins, use of transgenes, microarrays.
• Interactions of plants with pathogens. A discussion of plant resistance genes and the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in plant defence against pathogens.

The Plant Biotechnology course will include:

• Causes and effects of ionic imbalances in soils.
• Effects of extremes of temperature and water stress on crops.
• Topics in cereal and potato biotechnology.
• Host pathogen interactions in plants and disease resistance.
 

IT Courses

The University IT Education Unit runs a considerable number of training programmes in various aspects of IT and computing throughout the year. They are usually about half a day in length. Students are encouraged to attend courses that may be useful to them. The courses are available on a voluntary basis without any charge.

Examples of courses that may be useful are:
• The use of “Powerpoint”
• The use of spreadsheets (Excel)
• The use of minitab for graphics and statistics
• The use of End note

Oral Presentations

An essential skill for any aspiring research scientist is to be able to communicate scientific ideas to an audience. This is a skill we will develop in the course of the year. Training will be given in this particular transferable skill, and it will be assessed.

Laboratory Projects

Students will do two 20-week projects. These are central to the course and will occupy most of each student’s time.