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    Developmental Biology is a synergy of nearly all the biological disciplines serving to address the big question of why we are the way we are.  The main focus of this course is to gain a global perspective of Development as a synthesis of gene regulation, molecular signal transduction, cellular architecture, cell behavior, and tissue morphogenesis.  With this global perspective in mind, this course should prepare students to think critically about what is currently accepted and unknown in the field of biology.  Students will learn key concepts in development from fertilization to embryonic cloning that will provide the foundation for those destined for careers in research or those who wish to become conscious citizens of the issues facing today’s society.  To encourage students to think critically and develop their communication skills, they will be introduced to primary literature, required to present one article during class, and construct a research grant proposal.

Course Construction:
            This course is broken into 7 main Units with each unit consisting of around 6 class meetings.  A unit is focused on a particular key concept in the field of developmental biology.  Specific unit themes are listed below.  There will be an exam after every two units and all exams are semi-cumulative; meaning information provided in the first two units will undoubtedly play a role in understanding the material provided in the following units, however direct questions about previous units will not occur.  Text: Principle material for this course will come from Dr. Scott Gilbert’s text book Developmental Biology 8th ed.  However, each unit will also have accompanying chapters from other text books, review articles and original research articles which will all be made available in hard or electronic forms prior to the scheduled unit.

Unit Themes:
    1. Concepts; Fertilization; Cell Cycle and Cleavages    
    2. Gastrulation
    3. Axis Determination and Primary Induction
    4. Neural Induction and CNS Patterning
    5. Trunk Development (hox genes, somitogenesis, limb)
    6. Plant Development and Evo-Devo
    7. Stem Cells and Human Cloning

Breakdown of a Unit:
    Generally, a Unit will consist of ~2 introductory classes (text material and reviews), ~2 classes covering some finer details of the concept using examples from primary literature as well as other sources, and ~2 classes reserved for student presentations and Web conferences with investigators related to the original research article being presented (see below). 

Assessment:

Exams: Exams will be focused on your ability to not only explain a given process, interpret data, but also support your claims with a description of the experiments and data that led to the current theories. 

Unit assignments:  These are take-home/internet-based assignments given once for each unit.  For most of the unit assignments during the first half of the semester they will be in the form of scenario questions to force you to think about the material being covered.  Toward the second half of the semester, unit assignments will largely be focused on preparation for the grant proposal.  Students should feel free to work in groups on any unit assignment.

Oral presentation:  Individual students will present one original research article that relates to the main theme of the Unit.  I select the research articles to be presented in each Unit, however article suggestions are welcome but do require my approval.  Powerpoint presentations are required as it is the universal mode of presenting research talks.  Students should plan to lecture for no more than 20minutes.  Prior to a scheduled presentation, all students are required to submit 3 critical questions or comments about the articles for a given unit.  I will look over these questions and some of them will be selected for special Q&A at the end of the presentation. 

     For some units we will be joined by the lead investigator from the article to participate in the Q&A session at the end of class.  This is a rare experience in which video conferencing will actually bring these highly respected investigators into our classroom.  They will be able to bring a very personal perspective of the work to our discussion enabling us to ask questions that we would otherwise never be able to.   Because this addition to the class requires taking these video visitors precious time, students must take reading these articles and generating critical questions very, very seriously.  To see actual web conferences from past courses go to Barresi Biology Web Conferences.

Art Project:  One of the main points of this course is to understand the molecular events that lead to cell fate regulation.  To emphasize this point, individual students will depict the process of cell differentiation with a focus on one signaling system, the transduction of that signal and ultimate genes that are regulated.    The field of developmental biology is very visual and often researchers will construct artistic depictions of their suggested models.  Therefore this assignment is to create some kind of visual representation of an inducing signal causing specific gene regulation that leads to cell differentiation.  Any type of media may be employed, such as illustrations (free hand or computer rendered), paint, sculpture, video storyboarding, or even theatrical. Words may be used only to support the visual information as in a schematic model in a research paper.

Grant Proposal:  Individual students will prepare a (1) specific aim grant proposal according to The N.I.H. format.  Throughout this course students will learn much of the current knowledge that exists to explain how a single cell embryo can develop into an adult organism.   For every proposed model of embryonic development new questions emerge.  The challenge for Developmental Biologists is to devise answerable questions to further our understanding of the genetic, molecular, and cellular processes controlling development.  After reading much from the text and primary literature students will be asked to generate several possible proposal ideas, one of which will be used for their final grant proposal.  To complete this writing assignment students will devise a hypothesis to explain an unknown aspect of development, come up with experiments to test this hypothesis, and suggest what the possible outcomes are of those experiments. 

DevBio Toolbox:  This "toolbox" is a group online wiki that consists of techniques, experiments, and certain tools that Developmental Biologists use.  This toolbox will truly be an asset to help you stay organized, and it will be particularly helpful when preparing for exams and even more so for the grant proposal.  I believe that each student will also learn the material better if studied collaboratively, therefore this “toolbox” will be a joint effort by utilizing some of the group activity functions available through moodle, the course website.  I strongly encourage everyone to contribute to this toolbox as the more collaborative the effort, the less work each individual has to do.  This is not meant to add work onto you but rather help you better prepare for exams and formulating a grant proposal.