Hello! I'm a new member of this forum.

In 5 weeks, I'll be conducting an undergraduate seminar for one of my subjects. The topic should be about molecular biology (new discoveries, techniques, molecular basis of certain phenomena, diseases, etc.). Please help me find a nice topic which could be interesting to a lot of people.

Thanks a lot! =)

What year are the undergrads in and what degree are they doing? E.g a molecular biology seminar to medical students is very different to a molecular biology seminar to final year genetics students.

Also, it might help to know what size group you're giving it too - is it small enough to do anything interactive?

It will be for senior undergrads of molecular biology. My audience is about 15 although there might be other guests without a molecular biology background.

Something interactive might be fun. Any ideas? Thank you very much!

A really interesting new(ish) area is epigenetics, as I'm sure everyone knows. There's some cool new research in this area - looking at things like the molecular mechanisms of X-inactivation, imprinting and its links to diseases like Prader-Willi and Angelmann Syndromes, links to cancer and things like that, lots of cool stuff.

Given the recent Nobel Prizes for mRNA and RNAi some newer aspects regarding these might be interesting (and can be presented as topical . . . ) - motifs in mRNA that regulate stability? therapeutic RNAi apps? more interestingly, emerging RNAi roles in human biology etc.?

New technology seminar - aptamers, new DNA applications of things like FRET, that sort of thing?

Depends how smart and knowledgeable the undergrads are, I guess. I'm finishing my last week of undergrad at the moment and think the above could be interesting techniques, though have covered at least the basics of most of them already in undergraduate courses. Maybe an extension to recent research - a few case studies or something can be useful.

Have fun,

Fish

I would suggest you to do it on MICROARRAY. This is a cool technique for understanding the regulation of genes during a particular situvation depending on what you want.

so try it. have fun