Scientific Article On Biotechnological Process Of Lactase

Popular Science Article: Write a scientific article that could be understood by an intelligent member of the general public about the application of one enzyme (obtained from a cultivated microbe) used in a
biotechnological process.

It's been brought to my attention that some of you may be unsure of how to write your "Popular Science
Article" assignments (or what a popular science article even is).

First, to reiterate the assignment: Write a scientific article that could be understood by an intelligent member of the general public about the application of one enzyme (obtained from a cultivated microbe) used in a biotechnological process (500 words).

Popular science articles are NOT SPFs. An SPF has Intro, Methods, Results, Discussion. A popular science article is a short free text that discusses a topic of current interest in an accessible way so that it can be understood by as many people as possible. If you've ever read the magazine "New Scientist" then this is the kind of article we are thinking of. Here you can find some examples (none of these examples are about enzymes and biotechnology):

You'll notice that, usually, these articles only contain one reference to the original paper that they are covering in the article. However, in your case you will be writing a more general article not based on a specific paper. There is a section on the marking grid called "Reading, research and referencing" - thus, you are expected to do some reading/research and add some references. My suggestion is that for a 500 page article something like 3-5 references seems about right. There are no hard and fast rules but if you have 0 or only 1 reference then you'd get a low mark and if you had 10 or 20 references....well...there is no way you'd fit the citations into the text without going over the word limit.

For your specific article, please note the following:

1. It should be understandable by a member of the general public - avoid jargon terms or when necessary explain them e.g. enzyme - this is a biological catalyst, and a catalyst is a molecule that makes reactions happen more quickly. Avoid also extensive use of abbreviations e.g. PCR, however, terms like DNA should be ok as (hopefully) everyone knows what DNA is. You also want to make sure that the English is good. Here, you might want to consider getting a friend to proof-read it.

2. The article is about an enzyme - enzymes are proteins or nucleic acids that act to catalyse chemical reactions. Proteins that do not do this e.g. peptides do not count as enzymes. 

3. The enzyme should be from a cultivated microbe - you'll lose marks if you write about an enzyme isolated using metagenomic
approaches. To ensure this is clear for us when marking, I recommend that you mention in your article where the enzyme comes from (i.e. which microbe)

4. The enzyme should be currently used in a biotechnological process - not just theorised to do so. A really obvious example here would be the use of rennet (an enzyme isolated from calf stomachs) in the coagulation of milk to produce cheese (FYI: articles about calf rennet in cheese making will receive zero marks)