General Format
The paper should be divided into sections that are placed in the following order:

• Title
• Abstract
• Results
• Discussion
• Literature Cited

The text should be double-spaced. Information in tables and the Literature Cited can be single-spaced.

NOTE that you are not writing all of the sections of a primary literature paper. For example, you will NOT write an Introduction or a Materials and Methods sections. However, to help you better understand how your paper should sound, please follow this link to a sample Materials and Methods section. Read this document and try to mimic its quality and tone while writing the required sections for your paper.

Watch plagiarism: copying someone else's words, even if you reference their work, is illegal. You must put everything into your own words, and then if those ideas that you are describing are someone else's, you also must cite the reference from which those ideas came. Do not quote someone's words as you might do in a history or literature paper; scientists don't do that in standard research papers.

Consult the Communication in Biological Sciences website for two methods of citing references, choose one of those two, and consistently and correctly use them throughout your paper.

Writing should be in the past tense and third person:

• Yes: "The flies were counted…"
• No: "I counted the flies…"
• No: "Count the flies…"

However, YOU should read through both the initial and final drafts of your paper before handing them in. Critiquing your own work is very difficult, but it is a skill that will serve you well no matter what you end up doing.

Keep in mind that the writing and flow of your paper is important. Simply stringing together all of the items listed below for each section is NOT ENOUGH.

Text
TITLE

ABSTRACT

• Includes a short and concise explanation of what question you addressed in the experiment. For example: one sentence that introduces the question that was addressed, one sentence that states the methods (virgin female mutant flies were crossed with wild-type males...), one sentence that reports the results, and one sentence that makes a conclusion based on the original question that was addressed.This is generally the last section that you write because it is a summary. However, some writers like to write the abstract first because it is like a mini version of the paper and helps to organize their thoughts (some editing of the abstract is usually required after the rest of the paper is finished, but it's worth it if this method works for you).  

• In a sentence or two, recap the fly cross experiment by stating the hypothesis that was being tested and the general overview of the crosses that were done
• Begin with a description of the phenotypes of the F1 flies
• Write out the F2 results in the text (remember that numbers 10 and over are written as numbers whereas numbers under 10 are written out as words unless the numbers are part of a ratio)
• Include the F2 results in a table; remember to reference the table in the text
• Calculate the observed ratio based on your data (this will probably not be exactly a 3 wild-type:1 mutant, for example) and include this information in the text
• Explain that a Chi-square test was done and why, and what the Chi-square value was
• If you include other figures and/or tables, be sure to reference them properly in the text
• Do not include any interpretation of the results in this section!!

• In a sentence or two, recap the experiment by stating the hypothesis that was being tested and the general overview of the crosses that were done
• Interpret the Chi-square value
• State the critical value and the p value(s) associated with your Chi-square value
• Conclude whether the hypothesis is rejected or supported by the data and explain why you concluded that based on your Chi-square analysis (include the p values in your explanation)
• If your hypothesis is not rejected, list one or two other experiments that could be done to continue your work
• If your hypothesis is rejected, come up with one or more reasons why (e.g., the genes you are working with are linked, all your F2 winged flies flew away, etc.), state what you would do differently next time, list one or two other experiments that could be done to continue your work
• You set up your initial Parental cross by crossing females of one type and males of another. Discuss the results that you would have expected had you done the reciprocal cross. (Would they have been the same or different and why?)
• Discuss the wild-type function(s) of your fly gene(s) (with references), at the functional, molecular level. What type of protein does each gene encode? Enzyme? Transport protein? Receptor? Signaling protein? Structural protein? Transcription factor? etc. How does loss of this function lead to the phenotype of your mutant strain?
• Finish the paper with some sort of summary of your findings