Sidney MacKinnon ’21: Writing a Review Article
Hi! My name is Sidney MacKinnon and I have spent the summer continuing research on Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD). Due to COVID-19, my research group was unable to get into the lab to do our normal research this summer. However, Dr. Marla Tipping, of the Department of Biology, fellow PC student Abigail Harrington, and myself have begun the process of writing a review article. A scientific review article analyzes and summarizes already published work from primary sources. For our topic, we chose to look at Frontal Temporal Dementia in model organisms. Frontotemporal dementia is a rare neurodegenerative disease that is associated with atrophy of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Individuals diagnosed with FTD often experience personality and behavioral changes that impede their social abilities. As a growing interest in neurodegenerative diseases has surfaced, more research has been published on FTD in recent years. We specifically chose to investigate how research groups are utilizing different model organisms such as mice, fruit flies, zebrafish, and primates. The goal of our article is to synthesize the findings, both similar and different, that research groups have found using each model organism.
The first part of the summer consisted of Abby and myself finding and reading different papers published on FTD. To keep our article significant, we focused on papers published in the last few years. Now, we have begun the writing process and are working to create a figure or table to accompany our article. With the help of Dr. Tipping, we hope to continue this project into the fall and hopefully get our review article published. It has been a great experience so far and I have learned a lot about the writing side of science.
