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

描述(由申请人提供)：美国12岁及以上人口中约有8%是非法吸毒者(物质滥用和精神卫生服务管理局，2009年)。尽管滥用药物会带来经济、刑事和医学后果，但大多数人仍然不理解药物成瘾是一种脑部疾病。为了更好地提高公众对毒瘾的认识，一种策略是制定和实施一项教育计划，在小学、初中和高中水平上教授毒瘾科学。接触到这样一个项目的学生对毒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。目前的K-12药物滥用计划主要是向学生提供有关成瘾和滥用药物的信息(ATOD-TV，如果你喝酒)或劝阻学生使用药物(DARE，生活技能培训)。药物滥用教育中一个长期存在的缺陷是学生在活体动物身上进行和设计实验的能力，这一问题没有被现有的项目解决。上瘾物质的体内效应通常在哺乳动物(人类、小鼠、大鼠)中进行研究，但出于经济、实用、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。要克服这一障碍，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，浮游生物，一种水生扁虫，可以用来为小学生、初中生和高中生设计一个动手的、基于探究的教育项目。该计划将包含与国家科学教育标准(NSE)和州标准相关的课程，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效应来预测和模拟人类成瘾的各个方面。浮游生物是理想的有机体，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靶标。罗尔斯博士研究滥用药物对浮游生物的药理作用的广泛出版记录表明，这些生物是学生学习使成瘾过程永久化的条件的理想选择，包括身体依赖、戒断、敏化、耐受和环境场所调节。科学家、教育工作者和学生之间拟议的合作伙伴关系有望导致为4-12年级学生制定、实施和传播可重复的药物滥用计划，该计划在最初的资助期之后是可持续的。我们希望这一新颖的计划能够实现多个目标，即增加学生对毒瘾科学的了解，提高学生在基础科学研究中照顾和使用动物的意识，改变学生对药物滥用的态度，并提高学生从事生物医学研究职业的兴趣。

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.