Undergraduates can publish too! A case study of a scientific team writing assignment leading to publication

The design and implementation of a scientific writing assignment in a >100 student upper-level undergraduate microbiology class resulted in a peer-reviewed publication in an open-access journal. The primary course objectives and requirements were met by assigning groups of four to five students one of 25 distinct section topics of similar size and complexity that complemented the course materials. Students were taught to identify, read and cite primary scientific literature, to avoid plagiarism, and to share in productive interactions with peers throughout the assignment by a combination of class instructions, and personal and group mentoring. A team of volunteer students performed additional editing and compiling of the manuscript into the final cohesive, submitted review

Efficient high-throughput cuticle preparations from fly lines yielding both viable and unviable embryos

Analysis of Drosophila cuticular structures is a classic genetic tool to infer the efficiency of developmental processes via careful morphological evaluation. When performing genetic screens in pursuit of mutations with developmental effects or during mutational scanning to identify functionally important protein domains, high throughput analyses of cuticles from numerous fly lines becomes necessary. To increase throughput ingenious structures of fly containers have been devised such as fly “condominiums”, that allow separate housing of relatively small numbers of flies of different genotypes and parallel embryos collections

Drosophila for drug discovery: useful tool or wishful thinking?

"In the quest for new effective drugs there is the push for faster ways to identify active lead compounds to develop and validate in drug discovery pipelines. Cell culture-based screens are easy to run and can be both standardized and automated to perform efficient high-throughput screens. Combined with the large available compound libraries, they can be useful to identify leads. However, many of such leads have been found to fail in the subsequent validation steps, where system complexity increases, with many compounds revealing as toxic to a multicellular organism or unable to penetrate the target organs. Flies are increasingly and successfully being used for pharmacological studies...

Misconcezioni in Matematica: una sperimentazione nella scuola secondaria di secondo grado

L’obiettivo di questa tesi è di analizzare una delle possibili cause di errore in matematica: le misconcezioni. La misconcezione rappresenta un momento di delicato passaggio da una prima concezione elementare ed intuitiva ad una più elaborata. Nel primo capitolo di questa trattazione, viene caratterizzato il significato del termine misconcezione, attraverso sia l'evoluzione della sua interpretazione a livello storico, che il processo di formazione dei modelli mentali, secondo l'interpretazione costruttivista di Bruno d'Amore. Nel secondo capitolo analizzeremo alcuni esempi di misconcezioni, note in letteratura. Nel terzo capitolo viene presentata una sperimentazione svolta in alcune classi seconde e quinte di licei scientifici. È stato somministrato un questionario, selezionando accuratamente argomenti e domande, per verificare quanto misconcezioni che si formano nel percorso precedente alla scuola secondaria di secondo grado possano essere ancora persistenti e per vedere se sono presenti possibili misconcezioni che si ipotizza possano formarsi nell'arco di questo livello scolastico

Editorial: RNA Regulation in Development and Disease

A wide variety of post-transcriptional regulatory events in the life of an mRNA have emerged as major checkpoints during its temporal and spatial journey within the cell. The advent of deep sequencing technologies combined with various fractionation or enrichment protocols has produced a wealth of data regarding transcripts, their variants and their interactomes. Yet, these data must be integrated with mechanistic and biological frameworks in order to better understand complex and dynamic regulatory networks that tailor mRNA metabolism and shape the cell proteome in healthy and diseased states

Modeling Renal Disease “On the Fly”

Detoxification is a fundamental function for all living organisms that need to excrete catabolites and toxins to maintain homeostasis. Kidneys are major organs of detoxification that maintain water and electrolyte balance to preserve physiological functions of vertebrates. In insects, the renal function is carried out by Malpighian tubules and nephrocytes. Due to differences in their circulation, the renal systems of mammalians and insects differ in their functional modalities, yet carry out similar biochemical and physiological functions and share extensive genetic and molecular similarities. Evolutionary conservation can be leveraged to model specific aspects of the complex mammalian kidney function in the genetic powerhouse Drosophila melanogaster to study how genes interact in diseased states. Here, we compare the human and Drosophila renal systems and present selected fly disease models

Cyst Reduction by Melatonin in a Novel Drosophila Model of Polycystic Kidney Disease

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) causes progressive cystic degeneration of the renal tubules, the nephrons, eventually severely compromising kidney function. ADPKD is incurable, with half of the patients eventually needing renal replacement. Treatments for ADPKD patients are limited and new effective therapeutics are needed. Melatonin, a central metabolic regulator conserved across all life kingdoms, exhibits oncostatic and oncoprotective activity and no detected toxicity. Here, we used the Bicaudal C (BicC) Drosophila model of polycystic kidney disease to test the cyst-reducing potential of melatonin. Significant cyst reduction was found in the renal (Malpighian) tubules upon melatonin administration and suggest mechanistic sophistication. Similar to vertebrate PKD, the BicC fly PKD model responds to the antiproliferative drugs rapamycin and mimics of the second mitochondria-derived activator of caspases (Smac). Melatonin appears to be a new cyst-reducing molecule with attractive properties as a potential candidate for PKD treatment

Cyst Reduction in a Polycystic Kidney Disease Drosophila Model Using Smac Mimics

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is an inherited malady affecting 12.5 million people worldwide. Therapeutic options to treat PKD are limited, due in part to lack of precise knowledge of underlying pathological mechanisms. Mimics of the second mitochondria-derived activator of caspases (Smac) have exhibited activity as antineoplastic agents and reported recently to ameliorate cysts in a murine ADPKD model, possibly by differentially targeting cystic cells and sparing the surrounding tissue. A first-in-kind Drosophila PKD model has now been employed to probe further the activity of novel Smac mimics. Substantial reduction of cystic defects was observed in the Malpighian (renal) tubules of treated flies, underscoring mechanistic conservation of the cystic pathways and potential for efficient testing of drug prototypes in this PKD model. Moreover, the observed differential rescue of the anterior and posterior tubules overall, and within their physiologically diverse intermediate and terminal regions implied a nuanced response in distinct tubular regions contingent upon the structure of the Smac mimic. Knowledge gained from studying Smac mimics reveals the capacity for the Drosophila model to precisely probe PKD pharmacology highlighting the value for such critical evaluation of factors implicated in renal function and pathology

Bicaudal C mutation causes myc and TOR pathway up-regulation and polycystic kidney disease-like phenotypes in Drosophila

Progressive cystic kidney degeneration underlies diverse renal diseases, including the most common cause of kidney failure, autosomal dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). Genetic analyses of patients and animal models have identified several key drivers of this disease. The precise molecular and cellular changes underlying cystogenesis remain, however, elusive. Drosophila mutants lacking the translational regulator Bicaudal C (BicC, the fly ortholog of vertebrate BICC1 implicated in renal cystogenesis) exhibited progressive cystic degeneration of the renal tubules (so called ªMalpighianº tubules) and reduced renal function. The BicC protein was shown to bind to Drosophila (d-) myc mRNA in tubules. Elevation of d-Myc protein levels was a cause of tubular degeneration in BicC mutants. Activation of the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) kinase pathway, another common feature of PKD, was found in BicC mutant flies. Rapamycin administration substantially reduced the cystic phenotype in flies. We present new mechanistic insight on BicC function and propose that Drosophila may serve as a genetically tractable model for dissecting the evolutionarily-conserved molecular mechanisms of renal cystogenesis

The Human Gut Microbiota: Toward an Ecology of Disease

Composed of trillions of individual microbes, the human gut microbiota has adapted to the uniquely diverse environments found in the human intestine. Quickly responding to the variances in the ingested food, the microbiota interacts with the host via reciprocal biochemical signaling to coordinate the exchange of nutrients and proper immune function. Host and microbiota function as a unit which guards its balance against invasion by potential pathogens and which undergoes natural selection. Disturbance of the microbiota composition, or dysbiosis, is often associated with human disease, indicating that, while there seems to be no unique optimal composition of the gut microbiota, a balanced community is crucial for human health. Emerging knowledge of the ecology of the microbiota-host synergy will have an impact on how we implement antibiotic treatment in therapeutics and prophylaxis and how we will consider alternative strategies of global remodeling of the microbiota such as fecal transplants. Here we examine the microbiota-human host relationship from the perspective of the microbial community dynamics