BNFO 300 
Molecular Biology Through Discovery
How to Write a Web Site Map
(for those translating articles)
Fall 2018 

By the midpoint of the semester, you will already have established a working relationship with your mentor. With your mentor's advice, you will have chosen a specifi article to translate. You will have gone through the article, listing the different experiments in it and making note of the methods that will require special attention. You will soon choose one of those experiments, one focused on molecular biology, and write a summary of it. In the end, your translation will be completed and presented on a website.

It is time to organize your website, deciding on its main features.

To make this exercise as straightforward as possible, I've provided an outline of the pages that might be present on your site, each of which you should describe. For each page either provide the content (including graphics) to the extent you can or describe what that content will be. You may take inspiration from the structure of the original article, but in the end the format you adopt will be guided more by the logic of the story you are telling and the needs of your target audience.

As you encounter holes in your knowledge you need to fill or other tasks that remain undone, note them in the map. Remove them as you do what you need to do.

You might be interested in an example of a website map.

OUTLINE

Front Page

  • The full reference to the article you're translating
  • A paragraph describing the article's significance in terms accessible (even engaging) to your target audience
  • An outline of all the pages to which this page will be linked, probably something like:
     
    • Abstract
    • Introduction
    • Experiments
       
      • Simple title of first experiment
      • Simple title of second experiment
      • . . .

Abstract

  • A translation or perhaps a more intelligible reworking of the abstract of the article, aimed at presenting the motivation behind the experiments, a gloss on the experiments themselves, and a description of the major results and conclusions.

Introduction

  • The general, large issue addressed by the article. This issue should be one that might engage your target audience. An example might be something like "What regulatory systems control the spread of non-cancerous cells?"
     
  • The specific, small question(s) addressed by the experiments you will describe. An example might be something like "Does P53 protein bind to DNA upstream from the gene determining microRNA MiR-145 in cultured cell lines?"
     
  • In between, the connection between the large issue and the small question(s)
     
  • Provide references as needed to support assertions. These will often but not always be references provided by the article.

(Simple title of experiment) (for each experiment)

  • Motivation behind the experiment
     
  • Description of the procedure. You will often link to a separate page to describe the specifics of a procedure.
     
  • Description of the result (not a conclusion) -- usually taking the reader through a figure or table

(Pages linked to from earlier pages)

  • Their contents