BIOL 4430

This is a low-stress lab course which can be rare to find at UVA. You learn a lot about plant experimentation and their biomedical potentials. He will throw random assignments at you that are necessary to complete to understand the concepts and results, but are for participation. Class usually doesn't take the whole time. I would encourage biology students to take this course because you can learn a lot in a low-pressure, calm, and friendly environment. Although the course is slightly unorganized, he provides several opportunities to participate, ask questions, and offer feedback. He also lets you resubmit reports if they need work. If you are unsure what research field to pursue, this course could help inspire you and figure out your interests because it is so interdisciplinary. Unlike other lab courses, this one teaches you experimental techniques and gives you directions to take when pursuing future experiments. Coming out of this class, I've gained a new perspective of nature's connection to humans that I can use outside of the classroom.

Great professor and interesting material! You have to come to class prepared but the work outside of class doesn't take too long and is generally enjoyable

Danna is great. He's young enough to UVA to not be jaded by all the bullshit and despite being really busy trying to get UVA to keep funding him (like all the younger professors do), he's very energetic and has a great dry wit in class. There's a fair amount of time spent doing work outside the allotted class period since you're doing actual science. What you're doing in his class has basically never been done before, as there's no literature on the actual experiments you're doing which makes it really great. Theoretically, if your class doesn't fuck up and you get good data, you could publish your final lab report in an actual journal. If I had to recommend anything, take really good notes on your procedures and consistently ask WHY you're doing things and what they mean. There's a lot of discrepancies between the procedures he gives you and what you actually end up doing so it's pretty hard to remember what you did six weeks ago if you didn't write it down and the procedure is different. Finally, this is not a hard class and Danna does not want you to do poorly. He wants you to learn shit.

If you've taken 4660 with Guler this class will be waaaay easier since you've already learned all the stuff about genetic manipulation covered in 4430.