A course-based undergraduate research experience examining neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster teaches students to think, communicate, and perform like scientists

Autor:	Josefa Steinhauer, Rebecca Delventhal
Jazyk:	angličtina
Rok vydání:	2020
Předmět:	Science and Technology Workforce Research Facilities Physiology Economics Social Sciences Careers in Research Science education Thinking Learning and Memory 0302 clinical medicine Animal Cells Medicine and Health Sciences Psychology Neurons Multidisciplinary Careers biology Communication Drosophila Melanogaster 05 social sciences Neurodegeneration Eukaryota 050301 education Neurodegenerative Diseases Animal Models Climbing Insects Professions Experimental Organism Systems Undergraduate research Active learning Educational Status Medicine Drosophila Cellular Types Drosophila melanogaster Research Laboratories Goals Human learning Research Article Employment Universities Arthropoda Science Policy Science education Research and Analysis Methods Human Learning 03 medical and health sciences Model Organisms medicine Animals Learning Students Curriculum Medical education Biological Locomotion Cognitive Psychology Organisms Biology and Life Sciences Rubric Cell Biology biology.organism_classification medicine.disease Invertebrates Disease Models Animal Cellular Neuroscience Labor Economics People and Places Animal Studies Cognitive Science Scientists Population Groupings Undergraduates 0503 education 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Neuroscience
Zdroj:	PLoS ONE, Vol 15, Iss 4, p e0230912 (2020) PLoS ONE
ISSN:	1932-6203
Popis:	As educators strive to incorporate more active learning and inquiry-driven exercises into STEM curricula, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are becoming more common in undergraduate laboratory courses. Here we detail a CURE developed in an upper-level undergraduate genetics course at Yeshiva University, centered on the Drosophila melanogaster ortholog of the human neurodegeneration locus PLA2G6/PARK14. Drosophila PLA2G6 mutants exhibit symptoms of neurodegeneration, such as attenuated lifespan and decreased climbing ability with age, which can be replicated by neuron-specific knockdown of PLA2G6. To ask whether the neurodegeneration phenotype could be caused by loss of PLA2G6 in specific neuronal subtypes, students used GAL4-UAS to perform RNAi knockdown of PLA2G6 in subsets of neurons in the Drosophila central nervous system and measured age-dependent climbing ability. We organized our learning objectives for the CURE into three broad goals of having students think, communicate, and perform like scientists. To assess how well students achieved these goals, we developed a detailed rubric to analyze written lab reports, administered pre- and post-course surveys, and solicited written feedback. We observed striking gains related to all three learning goals, and students reported a high degree of satisfaction. We also observed significantly improved understanding of the scientific method by students in the CURE as compared to the prior year’s non-CURE genetics lab students. Thus, this CURE can serve as a template to successfully engage students in novel research, improve understanding of the scientific process, and expose students to the use of Drosophila as a model for human neurodegenerative disease.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::b211c79ac86e2e8db3a4654b0333b939 https://doaj.org/article/7134b70c9b4e4b9a845a5af7844bd2f8 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Plný text ve formátu PDF Plný text ve formátu HTML
Nepřihlášeným uživatelům se plný text nezobrazuje	K zobrazení výsledku je třeba se přihlásit.