Building a Model of Collaboration Between Historically Black and Historically White Universities

Despite increases over the last two decades in the number of degrees awarded to students from underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, enhancing diversity in these disciplines remains a challenge. This article describes a strategic approach to this challenge—the development of a collaborative partnership between two universities: the historically Black Elizabeth City State University and the historically White University of New Hampshire. The partnership, a type of learning organization built on three mutually agreed upon principles, strives to enhance opportunities for underrepresented students to pursue careers in the STEM disciplines. This article further describes six promising practices that framed the partnership, which resulted in the submission of nine proposals to federal agencies and the funding of four grants that led to the implementation, research, learning, and evaluation that followed

ALTERED DEVELOPMENT IN APTEROUS DROSOPHILA: A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING MODULE

A major challenge in teaching North Carolina Essential Standards for Biology to high schoolstudents is that many of the processes or concepts cannot be seen, which makes mastery of the material difficult. However, students can acquire and apply new knowledge when teachers design and implement laboratory activities that emulate the processes or concepts students need to learn while capturing students? interest. The purpose of this investigation is to explore the effects of simulated acid rain on a strain of Drosophila melanogaster(the common fruit fly) as a collaborative study with student-scientists. There is strong evidence that acid rain damages forests, vegetable crops, buildings, aquatic organisms and even human health. This study reports an intervention aimed at helping students learn the processes of science by investigating a real life problem of environmental impacts on development in a living organism. A comparison of the pre-test and post-test data suggests that this intervention can enhance student learning and achievement

Trichostatin A enhances catalase activity in Drosophila melanogasterap56f

In an aerobic environment, catalase plays an important role in the defense of cells and organisms against the toxic effects of oxygen. Possible consequences of the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from the metabolism of oxygen include damage to biological macromolecules such as lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. The detrimental effects on cellular metabolism can result in the loss of viability. Catalase, an antioxidant enzyme, prevents the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen species, by catalyzing conversion of the substrate to water and molecular oxygen. In this inquiry, the role of an epigenetic agent on catalase levels was investigated to ascertain the potential of this approach for bolstering antioxidant defense systems in aerobic organisms. Trichostatin A (TSA) is a histone deacetylase inhibitor that targets the class I and class II histone deacetylases (HDAC) and histones H3 and H4 (Huidobro et al., 2013). Eukaryotic DNA is arranged into chromatin in which histone components of nucleosomes can be regulated by reversible acetylation. Histone acetylation is regulated by histone acetyltransferases and histone deacetylases (HDACs), which play important roles in transcription, DNA replication, and cell cycle progression (Benayoun et al., 2015). Trichostatin A, which inhibits HDAC, has been shown to stop cell cycling, induce differentiation, and reverse morphological changes seen in the cell cycle arrest (Santos et al., 2018). In this study, the activity of catalase in response to TSA was determined in four-day old adult flies of a mutant Drosophila melanogaster strain