Writing an abstract
Abstracts are the first thing that you will read in a paper or that an examiner will read in your dissertation. Despite this, it is often easier to write the abstract last after the main text has been completed. This is because at the end writing up your dissertation you should have a better overview of your project and are able to identify the key information. Abstracts summarise the main findings of your work, with all information also present in your main text.
Abstracts are typically structured as follows:
The methods used in the project
Methods should not have a high level of detail here. For example, if you used Western blotting to assess expression of protein X, you would only need to mention using the Western blotting technique and not specific details such as antibodies used. Or if you were performing bioinformatic analysis in R for your project, you would not need to state the specific libraries used here.
Typically, an abstract is 200-300 words; however, it is always wise to check for any specific word count limits provided by your module lead. Due to the limited words an abstract can be, it is required to be clear and concise.
In your abstract you should avoid citations and referring directly to in-text figures. For example, you can state ‘protein X significantly reduced across the timepoints examined’ but you would not need to reference which figure showed this.
Abstract Structure Exercises
Below are two abstracts which have had their orders mixed up. Read through each abstract and re-order the sections based on the typical structure of an abstract.