A.  Three things that stood out

Please describe, briefly, three things that you learned so far in BIOL463 and that really stood out to you (either because you enjoyed them, found them surprising, found them difficult – any reason).

            One thing that I learned recently is that non-coding RNAs such as AIR and Kc1qnot1 can prevent transcription of certain genes in cis. Air prevents the expression of paternal Slc22a3 while Kc1qnot1 prevents the expression of paternal Kcnq1. These are examples of genetic imprinting that can have some adverse effects in development. Another thing that I have learned is principle 6B: the three determinants of value are location, location, and location. It’s just so interesting to see through research that regulatory proteins such as Bicoid, Hunchback, Kruppel, and Giant are expressed at specfic timepoints in very specific locations; changing these locations or even preventing expression of these regulatory proteins can significantly divert development away from its normal path. In addition, I have also learned how important asymmetric distribution of maternal transcription factors/proteins is to the development of an embryo. If you don’t have asymmetric distribution of certain factors, there may not be any development to speak of. I thought that was really cool.

 B.  Identify types of knowledge

For each of your three “things”, please try to identify what type of knowledge it represents (Factual, Conceptual, Procedural/Skills, Metacognitive).

The non-coding RNAs AIR and Kcnq1ot1 preventing transcription is factual knowledge because there is research/evidence supporting this statement. Regulatory proteins such as Bicoid and Hunchback regulating development is also factual if you consider research that shows that these proteins are expressed in very specific locations within an embryo and knocking out these genes can alter development significantly. The asymmetric distribution of maternal factors being necessary for development is more conceptual because a lot of different examples can be encompassed by this statement. Since nothing specific is mentioned for this topic, it’s more of a concept than a fact.

 C.  What makes “things” stand out for you

For each of your three “things”, please indicate what made it stand out for you.

   All of the three topics mentioned here just makes me realize that development is so complex; so much has to go right for me to be able to be where I am right now. It makes my brain hurt just to try and think of all the mechanisms that must be involved. It would be interesting to see if someone could compile every single genetic mechanism that is necessary for one aspect of human development as we know it today. I would imagine this compilation would be larger than a collection of encyclopedias, maybe bigger than Wikipedia. What’s even more interesting is that there is more information coming in everyday and we might have to scrap some of our knowledge base because it’s just not accurate. This is why it stands out for me.

 D.  Evidence (of course, we are in a science course … we like evidence!)

Imagine that you need to test a group of students on one of your three “things”. Imagine that you need to determine, precisely, whether these students have acquired/developed the same knowledge that you have. How would you test them, and what would you consider as evidence that they have developed/acquired this knowledge?

 

	Three things that stood out	Type of knowledge	What makes these things stand out for you	Evidence/how you would test someone on this (select one “thing” only!)
1	Air and Kcnq1ot1 prevent transcription of genes in cis.	Factual	This is a mechanism of genetic imprinting and genetic imprinting has so much impact on development.	Describe to students the exact research associated with Air and Kcnq1ot1 and ask them what would happen if these non-coding RNA genes were knocked-out.
2	Bicoid, Hunchback, Kruppel, and other regulatory proteins are involved in specific processes in development	Factual	Normally, we are told in science that a certain phenotype we see is a result of many factors and is quite complex. This is for me a rare example of how knocking out one regulatory protein can give such huge differences in phenotype. That’s why it sticks out in my mind much more than other examples.	To determine if students really understand the concept, ask them what would happen if any of the regulatory genes are overexpressed or the genes are artificially expressed in different combinations in different times. If students can reasonably guess at the outcomes of such experiments, they have grasped the concept.
3	Asymmetric distribution of maternal factors is important for development	Conceptual	It’s just to difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that asymmetric distribution of certain proteins had a big role to play in me being where I am right now.	Provide students a hypothetical example in which asymmetrical distribution is prevented, by giving a drug that will stop transport around cells or ablate a transport protein. Ask students to predict what will happen if this situation occurs.