Planarians and the pharmacology of addiction: an in vivo model for K-12 education

描述（由申请人提供）：大约8%的12岁及以上的美国人口是非法吸毒者（药物滥用和心理健康服务管理局，2009年）。尽管与药物滥用有关的经济、犯罪和医疗后果，大多数人仍然不明白药物成瘾是一种脑部疾病。一个更好地提高公众对成瘾意识的策略是制定和实施一个教育计划，在小学、初中和高中阶段教授吸毒成瘾的科学。参加这类课程的学生对毒品成瘾的科学和后果的了解可能与他们对数学、经济学、语言艺术和历史的了解一样多。目前K-12的药物滥用项目主要是向学生提供有关成瘾和滥用药物的信息（《如果你喝酒》）或劝阻学生使用药物（《DARE》，《生活技能培训》）。在药物滥用教育中，一个长期存在的缺口是学生在活体动物中进行和设计实验的能力，而现有的课程没有解决这个问题。成瘾性物质的体内效应通常在哺乳动物（人类、小鼠、大鼠）身上进行研究，但由于经济、实际、法律和伦理方面的考虑，在K-12课堂上广泛使用哺乳动物是不切实际的。克服这一障碍所需要的是一种非哺乳动物物种——一种与科学相关但比哺乳动物更便宜、更方便的物种。我们假设涡虫，一种水生扁形虫，可以用来为小学，初中和高中学生设计一个动手，探究式的教育计划。该计划将包含与国家科学教育标准（NSES）和州标准相关的课程，这些标准将使学生能够设计和进行实验，研究滥用药物（咖啡因，尼古丁，酒精）的药理学，并学习如何使用这些药理学效应来预测和模拟人类成瘾的各个方面。纯虫是理想的生物，因为它们拥有一些人认为最早的“大脑”，并拥有类似哺乳动物的神经递质系统，这些系统是成瘾物质的目标。罗尔斯博士在研究涡虫滥用药物的药理作用方面的大量出版记录表明，这些生物是学生研究持续成瘾过程的理想条件，包括身体依赖、戒断、致敏、耐受性和环境条件。科学家、教育工作者和学生之间拟议的合作伙伴关系预计将导致4-12年级学生可重复的药物滥用计划的发展、实施和传播，该计划将在最初的资助期之后持续下去。我们希望这个新颖的项目能够达到多种目标，增加学生对药物成瘾科学的了解，提高学生对基础科学研究中动物护理和使用的认识，改变学生对药物滥用的态度，提高学生对从事生物医学研究事业的兴趣。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Approximately 8% of the United States population ages 12 and older are illicit drug users (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2009). Despite the economic, criminal, and medical consequences associated with drug abuse, most people still do not understand that drug addiction is a brain disease. One strategy to better enhance public awareness about addiction is to develop and implement an educational program to teach the science of drug addiction at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Students exposed to such a program could be as knowledgeable about the science and consequences of drug addiction as they are about mathematics, economics, language arts, and history. Current K-12 drug abuse programs are primarily directed toward providing students with information about addiction and abused drugs (ATOD-TV, If You Drink) or dissuading students from using drugs (DARE, Life Skills Training). A long-standing gap in drug abuse education that is not addressed by existing programs is the ability for students to conduct and design experiments in live animals. In vivo effects of addictive substances are typically studied in mammals (humans, mice, rats), but extensive use of mammals in K-12 classrooms is impractical due to economic, practical, legal, and ethical concerns. What is needed to overcome this barrier is a non-mammalian species - one that is scientifically relevant but cheaper and more convenient than mammals. We hypothesize that planarians, an aquatic flatworm, can be used to design a hands-on, inquiry-based educational program for elementary, middle, and high school students. The program will contain lessons linked to National Science Education Standards (NSES) and state standards that will enable students to design and conduct experiments to study the pharmacology of abused drugs (caffeine, nicotine, alcohol) and learn how these pharmacological effects are used to predict and model aspects of human addiction. Planarians are ideal organisms because they have what some consider the earliest 'brain' and possess mammalian-like neurotransmitter systems that are targeted by addictive substances. Dr. Rawls' extensive publication record studying the pharmacological effects of drugs of abuse in planarians indicates that these organisms are ideal for students to study conditions that perpetuate the addictive process, including physical dependence, withdrawal, sensitization, tolerance, and environmental place conditioning. The proposed partnerships between scientists, educators, and students are expected to result in the development, implementation, and dissemination of a reproducible drug abuse program for grade 4-12 students that is sustainable beyond the duration of the initial grant period. We expect this novel program to achieve the multiple goals of increasing student knowledge about the science of drug addiction, increasing student awareness about the care and use of animals in basic science research, shifting student attitudes about drug abuse, and enhancing student interest in pursuing biomedical research careers.