Archive for the 'My classes'

I’m teaching cancer biology in the fall, and if you want to get a head start over the summer, here are the texts we’re going to be using: Biol 4103: Cancer Biology Introduction to Cancer Biology, by Robin Heskith Cambridge University Press, 1st ed. ISBN 978-1107601482 The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee Scribner, reprint ed. ISBN 978-1439170915 Last time around, I used Weinberg’s The Biology of Cancer, which is an excellent, in-depth text, but was really heavy going for an undergraduate course — it’s more of a graduate/MD level reference book. The Heskith book is very good, giving more substantial introductions to the difficult concepts, and also as a bonus, is one third the price. Just having general chapters on cell signaling in normal cells, for instance, will be a big help in bringing students up to speed. For you outside observers, sorry, but this class won’t be going the supplementary blogging route. I’ve got some other cunning schemes I’m going to try on the students instead.

It’s going to be a good season, I can tell already. It’s finals week, so I’ll still have an abrupt pile of grading to do on Thursday, but otherwise, my teaching obligations are done for the semester. Now I’m trapped, trapped I tell you, in Morris for almost (I do have two quick trips to Europe planned) the entire summer with a collection of administrative responsibilities, but the good part of that is that I have ambitious plans for what I’ll be doing in the lab. I’m also going to be living the good life. So this morning I slept in to 7:00. I know, it’s slothful of me, but I have the freedom to indulge myself a little bit now and then. After I got up, I took a nice brisk walk downtown, did some shopping, stocked up on some fresh vegetables, and once I got home, chopped them up and set them to soak in a tasty marinade. I’ll roast them up for dinner tonight. Then I started reading up an accumulated mass of papers that’ll give me some implementation ideas for the work I have planned. I’ll have a student working with me, and we’ve got a couple of projects in the works. There’s some boring scut work to be done: lab cleanup, clearing out old reagents from the refrigerator, making up new stock solutions. Don’t be disillusioned, but part of the research life is janitorial…so much dishwashing. My grand plan requires an expansion of my fish colony to include multiple genetic strains, so we’re going to be scrubbing tanks, sterilizing surfaces, setting up new tanks with boring feeder fish to get the nitrogen cycle going and condition the water, getting the brine shrimp hatchery (live fish food!) thriving, all that sort of stuff that qualifies you to be a clerk in a pet store. Once all the tanks are bubbling away happily, we’re getting some new strains from the zebrafish stock center. Then it’s a few months of nursing them along, collecting eggs, propagating...
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I’m in Arizona, on my way to Orange County, but that doesn’t stop me: I’ve given my students a take home final exam. I wouldn’t want them to be bored over finals week, you know. 1. In the last lecture, I tried to give you a little context, and explained that a dynamic picture of biology would include evolution, ecology, and development, all subdisciplines that deal with change over time. You’re all upper level students; explain to me how developmental biology fits into the perspective on biology that your experience here at UMM has given you so far. Are there pieces you wish our curriculum emphasized more? Why? 2. We’ve spent most of the semester talking about animals — as it currently stands, evo-devo has an unfortunately limited emphasis on metazoans, with an occasional nod to higher plants. Explore a little deeper. What would an evo-devo of fungi, or bacteria, or protists talk about? Is the toolkit we’ve been talking about truly universal? Give me a brief precis of the developmental principles for any other kingdom. 3. Imagine that after you graduate, you find yourself in an unexpected job: you’re working in university press office or as a science journalist. You have to explain scientific research to the public every day. What general principles would guide you? These should be ideas about ethics, effective communication, psychology, etc. in addition to purely scientific concerns. Tell me what standards you’d have to become a great reporter of science. There. That should make them think.

It was the last day of classes for us. I brought donuts. Dammit, I just realized I missed a golden opportunity. I should have talked to them about Thrive and Pivar and Fleury and Andrulis. Crackpot fringe developmental biologists all seem to have a thing for donuts. Rats. Well, I’ll just send all my students an email and tell them they have to come back. They don’t even realize the importance of our little snack together.

After our disastrous chick lab — it turns out that getting fertilized chicken eggs shipped to remote Morris, Minnesota during a blizzard is a formula for generating dead embryos — the final developmental biology lab for the semester is an easy one. I lectured the students on structuralism and how there are more to cells then genes (there’s also cytoplasm and membranes and environment) earlier today. This afternnon I’ve given them recipes for soap bubble solution and told them to play. They’re supposedly making little model multicellular organisms by chaining soap bubbles together, and observing how the membranes follow rules of organization just like the ones we see in living tissue. In case you’re wondering what the recipe is so you can do it too, here’s my bubble soap formula: 5ml Dawn dishwashing soap 100ml DI water 1ml glycerine It gets better as it ages — there are perfumes and a small amount of alcohol solvent in the dishwashing liquid which evaporate off with time. The students are playing with concentrations, and if you’re making it up fresh and don’t want to wait until tomorrow, you can increase the concentrations of soap and glycerine. The more glycerine you add, the more long-lasting the bubbles are…and unfortunately, the heavier they are. If you want bubbles that will waft gently on the breeze, you’ll want less glycerine. It’s a very forgiving recipe, just play. I’ve also provided the students with a couple of books: the classic Soap Bubbles: Their Colors and Forces Which Mold Them by C.V. Boys, and The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles by Cyril Isenberg. They’re more about math and physics, but they have some nice illustrations. These are projects you can do at home with cheap ingredients bought at the grocery store, so those of you with kids might try playing with it this summer. There are simple rules about the angles of intersection...
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