Good Dog! Applications of Dog Science

Each year 6 to 8 million pet dogs enter shelters, and unfortunately, many are returned to shelters, or euthanized, due to behavioral problems. Many behavioral problems can be alleviated if dogs get exercise; however, some owners cannot provide dogs sufficient exercise. Further, some dogs may be physically unable to exercise. One possible solution is to provide dogs with mental exercise. We are currently developing a series of touchscreen computer tasks with the hope that they provide mental stimulation and can be made available to owners via a tablet application. As of now, a few dogs in our lab have learned to effectively use the touch screen. In the near future, we hope such touch screen tasks will transfer over into an application that will serve as an effective program to minimize the amount of behavioral problems, and hence, the number of dogs sent to, returned to, and euthanized in shelters

The Isolation and Characterization of Novel Bacteriophages from Central Illinois

Members of the Illinois Wesleyan University General Biology Science Education Alliance (SEA) laboratory isolated and characterized a number of distinctive mycobacteriophages. Each student collected soil samples from the central Illinois area then used streak assays and titrations to isolate unique phages that infect Mycobacterium smegmatis. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and DNA restriction enzyme digests were used to determine the morphology and tentative cluster placement of each phage. By the end of the semester, fifteen novel phages were isolated with a wide range of characteristics, despite the small sampling area. This data was submitted to the Mycobacteriophage DataBase. After analysis and class discussion, the DNA from three different phages were sent to the University of Pittsburgh for genome sequencing