This term I had the opportunity of being part of the MURC organizing committee, and I got the chance to read many different abstracts from students in different faculties. (This year we actually managed to get presentations/posters from non-science faculties too!!). Part of my job was to categorize the abstracts into related topics.

While reading the abstracts, I realized that it was relatively easy for me to understand the topics related to science/biology. I guess this is a good sign and it shows that I have actually learnt something in my 4 years of education. The difficulty however, was understanding and categorizing the topics that did not relate to life sciences. The individual words made sense … but putting the words together and making sense of it did not make any sense and I had to actually use Google/wikipedia.

This reminded me of our discussion about the general public and how research will apply/translate  to them. I can imagine the difficulty for someone with no background in life sciences if they ever tried to read a research paper. Therefore I think it becomes important for researchers, reviewers, journalists, teachers and anyone involved with the communication of the knowledge to not have any bias towards a specific conclusion. This could help the general public to be able to integrate/use the information found in research in their everyday choices.

So this happened some time ago …

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/uk-allows-ivf-using-dna-three-parents

And started a huge argument between my friends, regarding “genetically modified babies”. My friend who is not a biology major, was set against the idea because she felt that genetically manipulating babies is immoral.  In my opinion, since this technique is being used to treat a vital disease, then it should not be publicly discouraged and be labelled as “genetically modifying” (which carries a negative connotation already). Since they are simply changing the cytoplasm of the cell and only the mitochondrial genes will get replaced, which is only 37 genes (http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/mitochondrial-dna), then can this really be called genetically modifying? It seems to me that many people have found a fear of anything that is labelled as genetically modified, however I think that this fear is not scientifically accurate because this term can have a very wide range of applications, for example even selectively breading dogs can be termed genetically modifying.

So what does genetically modifying really mean to the general public … ?

Your task:
To write (about a paragraph) where you explain to a very concerned member of the
public what the role/function/importance of the use of animals is developmental biology
research is. You are encouraged to include your own thoughts and views. You should
provide well-developed arguments, and if you have ideas on how the use of animals
could be reduced, you are most definitely encouraged to share them.

I believe that using animals in developmental biology is essential because we cannot study development of multicellular organisms in a cell cultures or in a petri dish. By using these animals we could gain valuable information about the functioning/development of the human body. This information could potentially be used in medicine and increase our knowledge of genetic/developmental diseases. However this research should be highly monitored to prevent pain and suffering for the animals. These animals should not have a very complex neural circuit and severely mutated embryos should be eliminated before they become a well developed organism. The number of these animals could be minimized by the use of computer modelling as our technology becomes more advanced and our knowledge of developmental processes increases.

• Is there anything that you learned from your group members/from the discussion with your group members?

• Do you think your answer improved (from the individual to the group one)?

• Did you identify any points where you went wrong in your individual answer?

• How did you feel after the group portion?

I learnt that I should have included every piece of information that was given to us in the question. I think that my answer did improve because it became we managed to include more details. I did not recall any points where I may have gone wrong, it was simply including more details and considerations in the answer to the question. After the activity I still felt doubtful about our model :).

I was reading through some of my old notes from 335, and it is mentioned that “for LOF in double mutants, the phenotype that is observed is the one more downstream therefore it has a stronger effect” .. so I think Dr. Kalas might have made a mistake in class about the dorsalization/ventrilization of the drosophilla  in the week 3 lectures (pg 15) …

I think she mentioned that the dorsal mutant was a LOF and toll mutant was a GOF, however looking at my 335 notes, I think that both of the mutants may be a LOF mutant and therefore the phenotype that is seen is due to the gene/protein that is more downstream.

Looking at the artist’s drawing of the pathway, if dorsal was a LOF mutant and toll was a GOF mutant, then in a double mutant of dorsal and toll, we should get a ventralized embryo… So my main confusion here is that how is the embryo dorsalized when toll is always active and dorsal has lost its function …

🙁

Edit: Question resolved

1. Write one coherent paragraph, aimed at the general public, that summarize the main points that you and your group discussed today.

The formation of the human limbs is a complicated process involving gene regulation with precise timing. Many complications could occur during this process that may lead to the formation of abnormal limbs in humans. These anomalies are very distinguished and can be studied by scientists to understand the processes involved and possible solutions/medications for the disorder. The subjects for these studies can be humans or other mammals due to synteny in their genomes. The human subjects can be volunteers, paid,  or medical patients. Depending on the research, the information could be accessed by journals, other researchers and medical practitioners. The information would be depicted as experimental results and mechanisms with scientific analysis. Limb malformation can have two types: isolated and syndromic. Isolated malformation is a defect in a single system and can have many causes, while syndromic malformation is a pattern of anomalies that have a single cause (made some corrections from the group discussion). An example of an important protein in limb development is sonic hedge hog (SHH), and it has been suggested that defects in the regulation of this protein can cause anomalies in digit  numbers.

2. What was the hardest part of answering question 1?

Eliminating the information that would be considered “too detailed”  and keeping the information that would be relevant to the general public.

This question has been in my mind for some time …

Scientists determined that in frogs, if one transplanted the nucleus of a cell from a later developmental stage into an enucleated oocyte, the embryo is not likely to survive. Therefore it was suggested that as the frog embryo gets older the chromosomes become more restricted. However, for cloning Dolly the nucleus of a somatic cell from an adult sheep was used. Although only one oocyte survived out of the 434 oocytes, how was it possible that this nucleus reverted back to an embryonic stage?