Staying Current in Biotechnology
The field of biotechnology changes rapidly. Everyday significant new discoveries bring new products to market and new advancements in scientific research techniques. Everyone working in a biotechnology environment must keep up to date of these discoveries. Staying current on advances in biotechnology makes for a better-prepared lab technician.
Using the Internet it is easy to find short summary articles to keep a technician up to date. Several searchable databases catalog summary articles on biotechnology current events. Some websites are: Science Daily, Nature Biotechnology, (Biotechnology & Business site). These sites can be used to quickly search for short interesting articles on new scientific advancements.
However, one federally funded site, NCBI (PUBMED CENTRAL), is a database of every current peer reviewed scientific article involving cells and/or their components. We will use this site frequently throughout the year.
To Do Use the NCBI PUBMED database to find a current event article covering a topic in one of the domains of biotechnology.
1. Pick a domain of biotechnology. Go to NCBI PUBMED and find an article that covers a topic in that domain of biotechnology.
2. Do a quick "Graduate Read" to determine if you want to continue with that article.
3. Once you choose an article, record the title of your article on the board (so everyone has a different topic).
4. Record the website address (URL) if it is not on the document.
5. Actively read the article using the "Graduate Read" strategies and record the topic sentence (main sentence) in each paragraph.