What I taught today: maternal effect genes
It’s also a nice segue into the dorsal/ventral patterning genes, because flies do something similar there: proteins imbedded in discrete regions of the vitelline membrane diffuse to Toll receptors, where they selective activate the Dorsal protein by freeing it from the Cactus inhibitor. We go from a paint-by-number kit to a restored gradient from back to belly side of localization of free Dorsal protein to the cell nucleus. By the way, in case they were getting bored with flies, Dorsal is homologous to NF-κB in us vertebrates, using the same nuclear exclusion/inclusion mechanism, and NF-κB is a hot molecule in biomedicine and cancer research right now.
That was my hour. I closed by threatening them with talk of zygotic genes, specifically the gap genes, next week.
Also, Wednesday we’re going to try something a little different. We’ve finished chapter 5 of Carroll’s book Endless Forms Most Beautiful so they should be ready to weigh the importance of various mechanisms, so I split the class in two and told half of them to read Wray’s article on the importance of cis-regulatory mutations in evolution, and Hoekstra and Coyne’s article that argues for a more balanced emphasis. I’d love to have a fight break out in the room.
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Giliell, professional cynic:
February 25th, 2013 at 10:34 am
I get that trick!
For lectures where there is no mandatory attendance, many lecturers only give half the information on their slides and if you want to pass with a good grade then attending the lecture is paramount.
PZ Myers:
February 25th, 2013 at 10:42 am
No!
If the message of your talk can be encapsulated in 50 low information density powerpoint slides, you have no reason to be giving a talk in the first place. Send a memo instead.
RFW:
February 25th, 2013 at 11:09 am
P-zed: I want to tell you that I appreciate these reports from the behind the lectern, and that I admire your dedication to your teaching and the care you take with it. I hope your students are suitably appreciative.
Your attitude about the number of slides shown in a lecture and their content, in particular, is absolutely on point. When are you going to write a manual for university lecturers?
Yes, this is pure, unadulterated fan mail.
barp:
February 25th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Kudos on your slide minimalism. Can’t count how many lectures and seminars I’ve sat through that were simply a barrage of powerpoint slides, and they all were awful. It seems sometimes people have the notion that if enough info is on the slides, it exempts them from having to teach at all–the powerpoint does it for them.
I took a course on the Twin Cities campus last semester on teaching in post-secondary settings, and this emphasis on “less is more” in terms of both number of slides, and information density on those slides, was one of the main sticking points. Also, though I often find the methods involved in education research to be a little questionable, and the conclusions typically overstated, there’s a fair amount of research to support the idea that beating your students over the head with a thousand slides doesn’t work.
(ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE ALERT)
Though anyone who’s sat though enough terrible lectures could tell you that.
evodevo:
February 25th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Yessss ! Patterning has always fascinated me – my questions are about the pattern setup in the follicle. How do the follicle cells set up the gradient? What keeps bicoid and nanos confined to a gradient instead of diffusing out into a uniform field over time? Etc. etc. My last information inputs were in the middle to late aughts, so I’m not really up on these questions.
Menyambal --- son of a son of a bachelor:
February 25th, 2013 at 1:47 pm
I agree fully on the lecture/visual presentation ratio, and applaud your efforts to improve it. Spread the word!
I also applaud the biology in this post. I understood enough of it to feel proud of myself, and enough to know how much more fascinating knowledge is out there that I don’t know. And never will.
You don’t get as many comments on your scientific posts, possibly because there is noting to argue about. So I’m commenting to say thanks for the science.
Thank you, PZ.
ChasCPeterson:
February 25th, 2013 at 2:26 pm
I think somebody meant to ask if you’d post the answers, not students’ attempts.
thecalmone:
February 25th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Just out of interest (from an ex student teacher) – where do you get the images that you use on your slides? Are they yours, or maybe lifted from the course textbook?
rturpin:
February 25th, 2013 at 4:32 pm
The egg shapes the embryo by different molecules on the membrane? That is cool!
No questions this time. Though I’m still curious how a cell determines it’s an anchor cell, and what happens if two decide that.
PZ Myers:
February 25th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
They’re lifted from various texts. One prime source for this subject is Lawrence’s Making of a Fly.
chrislawson:
February 25th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
I’ve used a lot of slides in the past, but they were more as an aid to my peculiarly digressive style rather than a lot of high-density information. And in those slides, I’ve clearly marked the ones that do have the critical information for students who go back to the slides for revision, plus I usually add a 10-12 slide addendum that is a mini-quiz, again for revision purposes.
Having said that, it’s a technique I’m losing interest in partly because of the amount of work involved, and partly because our uni is moving away from traditional lectures and using the PowerPoint slides plus voice-over that the students can play in their own time. Frankly, I’m starting to favour abandoning the lecture altogether except for (i) key presentations of major new findings, (ii) special interest lectures, e.g. a visiting lecturer with something special to say, and (iii) course introductions, where getting the students and teachers into the same space together serves an important social function.
I’m even going off the VOPP (voice over powerpoint) approach and thinking of doing future “lectures” as web pages that can be read cross-platform with links to key papers/guidelines, low-res video, and small embedded HTML5 animations. Again the problem is workload, but I see this as the most effective and relatively obsolescence-proof method of disseminating didactic information.
chrislawson:
February 25th, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Giliell, I besnark lecturers who do that. My feeling (as both a past student and a current lecturer) is that if students don’t like turning up to your lectures, the problem is the lecture and not the students.
Sunday Afternoon:
February 25th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
The CEO at my previous company once spoke to us, an audience of 300+, for 90 minutes in a rented movie theater with just one slide on the overhead projector. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted to say and cued off the single slide to discuss them.
I learned a lot about public speaking that day.
wcorvi:
February 26th, 2013 at 8:45 am
PZ, in Texas you would be headed to JAIL – for requiring your students to – THINK!