Hey, I'm helping a HS student write a research abstract

[InquilineKea]

So after some corrections, this is her abstract. Can anyone suggest any further corrections? Thanks! (btw she went to a high school research program)

I'm thinking of changing from "is created from" to something else, like "comes from". I'm also thinking of adding some conclusive statement at the end - like - further research may provide insights on the position of cis-3-Hexenal in the biochemical pathway.

"The flavor from a tomato fruit (Lycopersicon esculentum) is created from the complex interactions between different volatiles. However, a tomato loses most of its flavor after refrigeration. Of all the volatiles in the tomato, cis-3-Hexenal was present in the highest concentration (12,000 parts per billion) and at the highest log odor unit: 3.7. It is also one of the few volatiles whose concentration increases after tissue disruption, which is known to be the moment a tomato begins to generate its characteristic taste and smell. Based on this research, we hypothesized that loss of flavor in tomatoes caused by refrigeration may be due to the shutdown of the biochemical pathway that creates cis-3-Hexenal as an end product. In order to test this hypothesis, we extracted RNA from many samples of tomatoes stored at differing temperatures after harvest. Afterwards, we used a microarray assay to analyze the differences in RNA production and, therefore, gene activity, between the tomatoes stored at different temperatures. Our microarray and laboratory tests show that there is a correlation between higher concentration of cis-3-Hexenal in tomatoes and loss of flavor, as production of cis-3-Hexenal was noticeably higher in fruits stored at room temperature when compared to fruits stored at refrigerated temperatures."

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

“Flavor” is a very subjective thing, isn’t it? Surely you can’t correlate a quantifiable thing like mRNA expression or cis-3-Hexenal level to “flavor”. What was your measure of “flavour”?

It seems very odd to me that you would do microarrays when your hypothesis deals with a single known pathway. Surely there was only a need to perform standard RT-PCR to ascertain the expression of several key genes in the cis-3-Hexenal pathway. Microarrays are difficult and expensive. Surely you would only want to perform these if you were interested in finding unknown genes that were regulated by temperature differences.

What was your baseline for comparison – tomatoes on the plant before harvest?

 

[CharonZ]

Off the hip and in addition what Hercules said (I basically have the same questions)

In general the first paragraphs do not distinguish well enough between the motivation of your research and what you have really done. e.g. did you measure the hexenal concentration or did you use literature data to justify your approach? In the latter case there should be more focus on this compound.

The flavor from a tomato fruit (Lycopersicon esculentum) is created from the complex interactions between different volatiles.

What interactions are you referring to? I would use volatile compounds and name the compound classes rather then simply refering to them as volatiles.

Based on this research, we hypothesized that loss of flavor in tomatoes caused by refrigeration may be due to the shutdown of the biochemical pathway that creates cis-3-Hexenal as an end product. In order to test this hypothesis, we extracted RNA from many samples of tomatoes stored at differing temperatures after harvest.

I would rephrase the start as something like "in order to investigate whether the loss of....". Also write more concise. Instead of "the pathway that..." write something like ".. shutdown of the cis-c-hexenal pathway".
Do not use fuzzy words like many. Either quantify it, or just say that you extracted RNA period.

Afterwards, we used a microarray assay to analyze the differences in RNA production and, therefore, gene activity, between the tomatoes stored at different temperatures.

Pull the sentences together. "Afterwards" implies a different experiment, but the RNA extraction was only an element of the microarray experiment. State what kind of microarray it was. Whole genome? Also the wording is a bit misleading. You do not measure absolute activities but either relative changes in gene expression or only presence of the analyte (if make a simple hybridization with one probe).

Our microarray and laboratory tests show that there is a correlation between higher concentration of cis-3-Hexenal in tomatoes and loss of flavor, as production of cis-3-Hexenal was noticeably higher in fruits stored at room temperature when compared to fruits stored at refrigerated temperatures.

What laboratory tests? None beside microarray were mentioned (also microarray is done in labs, no?). The results presented here do not correlate with the experiments above. Here you state that hexenal concentration was increased, but in a microrray (really why the heck not simple qPCR?) you measure gene expression. One does not necessarily follow from the other. Loss of flavour has been commented by Hercules already.