howtowritematerialsmethodsaka,avoidingprotocol.docVIP

How to Write Materials Methods: aka, avoiding “Protocol Speak” Focus: Protocols are instructions to “do this, then that” in an exact, detailed time-course set of instructions for YOU to follow. Materials in Methods should be none of that; rather, MM sections begin with a title that states the goal of the procedure that will be described and then explains how one accomplishes that goal from the starting material to the end point that is described in the title. In this case, the focus is on spinach leaves as the starting material and the goal of the first section is to end with intact thylakoids in suspension. A good title would be “Preparation of Thylakoid Suspension”. Although it is important for your “new” reader, who knows nothing, necessarily, about photosynthesis or the “Hill reaction”, to be able to follow what is done to the spinach to accomplish the goal (measurement of electron transport rate in photosynthesis), don’t spend time here explaining a lot of theory. MM is a “how to do it” section; it is not so much a “why does it work this way” section. Effective Concentration: You should use concentration rather than volume or weight terms whenever possible. Concentration terms are % (vol/vol or wt/vol), M, wt/vol such as mg/ml, etc. For example, instead of saying that you combined 30gm of spinach leaves with 80 ml of a solution, calculate the conc. of spinach in % (wt/vol). Since % is g/100ml, make a ratio of 30/80 = x/100 to solve for % spinach in 100mM Tricine NaOH, 400mM sorbitol and 5mM MgCl2. Notice I avoided the term grinding medium since it is a non-defining descriptor; instead, I gave only the ingredients and conc. of this reagent. When you resuspend something “solid”, like a pellet, with something liquid like the resuspension solution or breaking or grinding medium used as a diluent, you are not changing the concentration of the ingredients in those diluents, so you don’t have to recalculate effective concentration of each ingredient as