I need some direction with research I want to do. For background, I am a junior in high school and part of a program from which I got two publications into the NCBI for isolating proteins from a plant called duckweed and doing some rudimentary bioinformatic analysis on it. I also had the chance to 3-D print the protein with its important domains/ligands highlighted. I want to take what I have (a DNA sequence and extensive knowledge of the structure) to make a claim and write a full fledged research paper. Without further lab experiments, I am not sure about what direction I can take what I have to write a proper research paper. Any tips/advice would be appreciated. Also I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this, so any forum recommendations which may be more helpful would be appreciated.!
What is known about this protein from duckweed? Is it newly identified or was this an educational exercise in how to isolate proteins? Among others, a semi-recent publication in Frontiers in Chemistry published the genome of two species of duckweed in 2018. (PMID: 29974050)
As a scientist (well, genetics Ph.D. candidate getting close to finishing), I can tell you that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible to publish anything by yourself. While I am sure you could find some blog online or what-not, in science, credit is really only given to peer-reviewed work - that means submitting your work to a journal for experts in the field (usually 3 reviewers) to review. These reviewers decide if the journal should accept an publish your manuscript as is, if you need to make changes or do additional experiments, or reject the manuscript outright. Writing a true scientific paper is likely completely different from anything you have ever written before. In a lot of ways, science is its own language. I am not saying this to discourage you, but often high school students don’t realize quite how complex this process is. (I had no idea when I was in high school!)
In order to do this, you will need to find a mentor, a professor or other scientist who works in the field. It appears that the DOE approved a proposal to sequence Duckweed in 2009. Principal investigators included: Todd P. Michael, Randall Kerstetter, and Joachim Messing (Rutgers); John Shanklin and Jorg Schwender (Brookhaven Natl. Lab.), Elias Landolt (Institut für Integrative Biologie, Switzerland), Klaus Appenroth (Univ. of Jena, Germany), Tokitaka Oyama (Kyoto Univ.), Todd Mockler (Oregon State Univ.)
https://jgi.doe.gov/why-sequence-the-greater-duckweed/
Best of luck! Continue with you your curiosity! Feel free to contact me via inbox, if you’d like.