The course consists of lectures to give the theory, but mostly practicals to illustrate the whole process. The students can bring their own biological material to the first day of class, in agreement with the teacher, so that preparations can be made. The students have to hand in a lab journal that has to be approved.

The students shall be able to harvest their plant or animal material, fix it, wax-embed it, section it in a microtome, transfer to a pre-coated slide, make probes of potentially interesting gene sequences, hybridise with the probes, develop and examine under the microscope. One is able to see which genes are active (expressed) at any given time in a developmental process. The students should be able to see the potential and the limitations for the technique in plant sciences.

Lectures, laboratory work.

Lectures, web support through Fronter and guidance during exercises in the laboratory.

Practical in situ hybridisation, by Trude Schwartzacher and Pat Heslop-Harrison (2002).

BOT130, BIO120.

Practicals in the laboratory and journal

Submitted laboratory report counts 100%.

Ca. 150 hours.

Special requirements in Science

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There will normally be activities from 9am-4pm each day, with some modifications depending on how much time is spent.

This course is meant for undergraduate and PhD students who work on gene expression and wish to learn techniques to study gene expression in anatomical sections of plants or animals. The students can bring their own plant material if they wish. We will fix the samples, embed them in wax, section, and hybridise with their own probes or probes provided in the course. Lastly, we will develop the expression and examine the result under the microscope.

The examiner takes part in the assessment.