Mandë Holford's Research Summary

Mandë Holford hopes to one day use venom from deadly snails to kill pain in human beings. This is the gist of headlines preceding articles based on Holford’s current research published by NPR and PBS. However, Holford's publications of her research tend to have less explosive and technical names such as “Characterization of Shared Pigments in Colorful Avian and Mollusk Shells” and “A Novel Bioactive Peptide Toxin from Terebrid Marine Snails”. For this case study Holford’s research paper titled “Characterization and Recombinant Expression of Terebrid Venom Peptide from Terebra guttata” and a literature review she participated in named “From Mollusks to Medicine: A Venomics Approach for the Discovery and Characterization of Therapeutics from …show more content…
The National Science Foundation's goal is "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense...". Holdfords grant proposal focuses on their hopes to discover new neurotoxins within the terebrid marine snails. It is important to note that the audience for this grant is one that is critiquing the author's proposal, the author needs to convince the audience that her work is something they should invest in because it will yield important results. There is no adaptation of the information because the authors goal is to explain the plan and importance of her work in the most straightforward and concise way that she can. At this point, it is not really the technical parts that matter the most but both the ethos an logos that the author uses to show the readers that there is a logical connection between her research and the National Science Foundation's mission. In the final part of the section that describes what this research will result in, the author specifically states that this is a “fundamental advance in the characterization of the neuron circuit”. This part already showed how this project would expand humanity’s knowledge relating towards the specific characteristics of the neurotoxins and venom possessed by terebrid marine …show more content…
The writers are trying to convince the audience that this research is important, however the audience is different this time. This audience isn’t looking at the facts to determine whether this research is worthwhile, this public is looking for something interesting and that can make a difference and they personally care about. A new way to characterize peptides from snails isn’t something that a lot of the public would find ground breaking, but when it is worded as “a cure all for pain” this is something that is more relevant to the general public and something they have a stake in.
These four different sources relating to Mandë Holford’s work show how the content of writing differs in response to both their purpose and the audience they are catered towards. When writing for the general public it needs to be known that they will not be interested in something that. When writing for an audience such as the scientific community this emotional/interest aspect is removed but in most cases the writer still needs to convince the community of their credibility and the validity of their work or the claims they are