YEAST MUTANTS AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL, PHASE I

酵母突变体作为教育工具，第一阶段

• 批准号: 6056735
• 负责人: Gary Edward Dean
• 金额: $ 24.85万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-09-01 至 2001-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6056735
• 关键词: Internet; adenosinetriphosphatase; cell biology; computer network; curriculum; education evaluation /planning; elementary school; enzyme structure; fungal genetics; health science research; information dissemination; molecular biology; mutant; nucleic acid sequence; science education; secondary schools; teacher; training

To stimulate an interest in science, children need to be exposed to real scientific research to sense the excitement of discovery and gain a feel for what the scientific method truly means. Because of the increasing importance of molecular biology in our daily lives, it is also desirable to expose them to modern molecular biological methods. Finally, in order to be widely disseminated, any program should involve reasonably inexpensive materials. The overall objective of this Phase I proposal is to develop a method to involve school-age children in real scientific research in order to enhance and motivate their educational science curriculum. We have designed the experiments described herein to safely illustrate basic biological ideas in the elementary and secondary school classroom. In brief, the experiments are designed to generate and characterize yeast mutants in a poorly-understood but important large membrane-bound proton-pumping enzyme termed the vacuolar ATPase (V- ATPase). This enzyme is responsible for producing the acidic conditions found in the lumen of such structures as the yeast vacuole, and organelles in higher cells such as the lysosome and the neurosecretory vesicle. Teachers will first be trained over the summer in basic cell biology and in the methods used in the experiments. Teachers will then have their students perform these experiments in the classroom. Students will isolate the (plasmid-borne) gene from each mutant after proving phenotype and send it to the P.I.'s laboratory for sequence determination. All sequences will be shared with the students. Students will be asked to predict the consequences of the mutations on the structure of the enzyme (based on a plausible crystal structure modeled after the known F1FO ATPase structure) and to develop hypotheses about further mutations. At the discretion of the P.I., certain of these hypotheses will then be tested by a subsequent group of students. Because teaching a subject has the effects of solidifying what has been learned, another important aspect of this project will be the involvement of secondary or middle school children to serve as mentors for elementary school children, both in face-to-face learning situations and via the Internet. To share the sequence and assay data, to insure that data collection is occurring in the proper manner, and to provide expert experimental help for both students and teachers, the schoolchildren's classroom will be linked with the laboratory of a scientist (the P.I.) interested and involved in understanding V-ATPase structure and function. We anticipate that dissemination of this program (or similar programs focused on other genes) will be reasonably straightforward. Teachers and students will both gain a strong appreciation of how science really works and we will collect fundamentally interesting mutants in the V-ATPase.

为了激发孩子对科学的兴趣，孩子需要接触真实的科学 科学研究，感受发现的兴奋并获得感受 科学方法的真正含义是什么。因为越来越多 分子生物学在我们日常生活中的重要性，也是可取的 让他们接触现代分子生物学方法。 最后，在 为了广泛传播，任何计划都应合理地涉及 廉价的材料。 第一阶段提案的总体目标 是开发一种方法让学龄儿童参与真正的科学 研究以加强和激励他们的教育科学 课程。 我们设计了本文描述的实验以安全地 阐述中小学的基本生物学思想 课堂。简而言之，实验旨在生成和 描述酵母突变体的一个鲜为人知但重要的大 膜结合质子泵酶称为液泡 ATP 酶 (V- ATP 酶）。这种酶负责产生酸性条件 存在于酵母液泡等结构的内腔中，并且 高等细胞中的细胞器，例如溶酶体和神经分泌细胞 囊泡。 教师将首先在夏季接受基本单元的培训 生物学和实验中使用的方法。 届时老师们将 让他们的学生在课堂上进行这些实验。 学生将从每个突变体中分离出（质粒携带的）基因 证明表型并将其发送至 P.I. 实验室进行测序 决心。 所有序列将与学生共享。 学生将被要求预测突变的后果 酶的结构（基于合理的晶体结构 以已知的 F1FO ATPase 结构为模型）并提出假设 关于进一步的突变。 根据 P.I. 的判断，某些 这些假设将由随后的一组学生进行测试。 因为教授一门学科具有巩固已有知识的效果 据了解，该项目的另一个重要方面是 让中学生参与担任导师 对于小学生，无论是在面对面的学习环境中 并通过互联网。 共享序列和检测数据，以确保 数据收集是以正确的方式进行的，并提供 为学生和教师提供专家实验帮助， 学生的教室将与实验室相连 对了解 V-ATP 酶感兴趣并参与其中的科学家（P.I.） 结构和功能。 我们预计这一消息的传播 程序（或专注于其他基因的类似程序）将合理地 直截了当。 老师和学生都将获得强大的力量 了解科学的真正运作方式，我们将收集 V-ATP酶中非常有趣的突变体。