The Pathway to Bacterial Genetics

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Schindler

This chapter reviews Esther Zimmer’s early training, as she set out on a parallel career pathway, from Neurospora to bacteria, to her future husband Joshua Lederberg. While still a junior at Hunter College, Zimmer found the best possible mentor in Bernard Ogilvie Dodge, the foremost expert in Neurospora, the new model organism of genetic research. After graduation, Dodge helped her gain further research experience at the Industrial Hygiene Research Laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked with Alexander Hollaender, an expert in radiation biology. After two years of training in the procedures for developing X-ray and UV induced mutations, Zimmer acquired her bona fides for graduate school. She was accepted to graduate school at Stanford University because of Dodge’s association with George Beadle, who, with Edward Tatum, had developed a new paradigm for biochemical genetics: “one gene: one enzyme.” In 1946, their similar experiences in Neurospora research brought Joshua and Esther together.

2012 ◽  
Vol 206 (1) ◽  
pp. S322
Author(s):  
Timothy Dye ◽  
Zoe Hammatt ◽  
Skol Watanawongskul ◽  
Tina Dean ◽  
Pamela Bullard ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Tina K. Ramnarine

This book highlights the unique insights that Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D Minor (op. 47) offers into the composer’s musical imagination, violin virtuosity, and connections between violin-playing traditions. It discusses the concerto’s cultural contexts, performers who are connected with its early history, and recordings of the work. Beginning with Sibelius’s early training as a violinist and his aspirations to be a virtuoso player, the book traces the composition of the concerto at a dramatic political moment in Finnish history. This concerto was composed when Finland, as an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire, was going through a period of intense struggle for self-determination and protest against Russian imperial policies. Taking the concerto’s historical context into consideration leads to a new paradigm of the twentieth-century virtuoso as a political figure, which replaces nineteenth-century representations of the virtuoso as a magical figure. The book explores this paradigm by analyzing twentieth-century violin virtuosity in terms of labor, recording technology, and gender politics, especially the new possibilities for women aiming to develop musical careers. Ultimately, the book moves away from the compositional context of the concerto and a reading of the virtuoso as a political figure to reveal how Sibelius’s musical imagination prompts thinking about the long ecological histories of musical transmission and virtuosity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Euna Jo ◽  
Seung Jae Lee ◽  
Eunkyung Choi ◽  
Jinmu Kim ◽  
Sung Gu Lee ◽  
...  

AbstractArtemia is an industrially important genus used in aquaculture as a nutritious diet for fish and as an aquatic model organism for toxicity tests. However, despite the significance of Artemia, genomic research remains incomplete and knowledge on its genomic characteristics is insufficient. In particular, Artemia franciscana of North America has been widely used in fisheries of other continents, resulting in invasion of native species. Therefore, studies on population genetics and molecular marker development as well as morphological analyses are required to investigate its population structure and to discriminate closely related species. Here, we used the Illumina Hi-Seq platform to estimate the genomic characteristics of A. franciscana through genome survey sequencing (GSS). Further, simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci were identified for microsatellite marker development. The predicted genome size was ∼867 Mb using K-mer (a sequence of k characters in a string) analysis (K = 17), and heterozygosity and duplication rates were 0.655 and 0.809%, respectively. A total of 421467 SSRs were identified from the genome survey assembly, most of which were dinucleotide motifs with a frequency of 77.22%. The present study will be a useful basis in genomic and genetic research for A. franciscana.


Author(s):  
V. I. Przhilenskiy

The article examines the experience of legal regulation of biobanks in the Nordic countries in the context of the interaction of law and bioethics. The article analyzes the moral possibilities and legal boundaries of access to personal data by the state, society and the research community, provided that the inviolability of private life is strictly observed. On the basis of legislation of individual Nordic countries, as well as the regulatory framework of the European Union, the successes and difficulties in achieving the stated goal are discussed. The issues of opening, functioning and closing of biobanks, as well as the institutional, value and socio-cultural contexts of relevant practices are considered separately.


2025 ◽  
Vol 74 (10) ◽  
pp. 6140-2025
Author(s):  
ALEKSANDRA ŁOŚ ◽  
MAŁGORZATA BIEŃKOWSKA ◽  
ANETA STRACHECKA

Insects perfectly fit the flagship principle of animal research – 3R: to reduce (the number of animals), to replace (animals with alternative models) and to refine (methods). Bees have the most important advantages of a model organism: they cause minimal ethical controversy, they have a small and fully known genome, and they permit the use of many experimental techniques. Bees have a fully functional DNMT toolkit. Therefore, they are used as models in biomedical/genetic research, e.g. in research on the development of cancer or in the diagnostics of mental and neuroleptic diseases in humans. The reversion of aging processes in bees offers hope for progress in gerontology research. The cellular mechanisms of learning and memory coding, as well as the indicators of biochemical immunity parameters, are similar or analogous to those in humans, so bees may become useful in monitoring changes in behavior and metabolism. Bees are very well suited for studies on the dose of the substance applied to determine the lethal dose or the effect of a formula on life expectancy. Honeybees have proven to be an effective tool for studying the effects of a long-term consumption of stimulants, as well as for observing behavioral changes and developing addictions at the individual and social levels, as well as for investigating the effects of continuously delivering the same dose of a substance. The genomic and physiological flexibility of bees in dividing tasks among workers in a colony makes it possible to create a Single- Cohort Colony (SCC) in which peers compared perform different tasks. Moreover behavioral methods (e.g. Proboscis Extension Reflex – PER, Sting Extension Reflex – SER, free flying target discrimination tasks or the cap pushing response) make it possible to analyse changes occurring in honeybee brains during learning and remembering. Algorithms of actions are created based on the behavior of a colony or individual, e.g. Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (ABCA). Honeybees are also model organisms for profiling the so-called intelligence of a swarm or collective intelligence. Additionally, they serve as models for guidance systems and aviation technologies. Bees have inspired important projects in robotics, such as B-droid, Robobee and The Green Brain Project. It has also been confirmed that the apian sense of smell can be used to detect explosive devices, such as TNT, or drugs (including heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis). This inconspicuous little insect can revolutionize the world of science and contribute to the solution of many scientific problems as a versatile model.


FACETS ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 818-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora J. Casson ◽  
Colin J. Whitfield ◽  
Helen M. Baulch ◽  
Sheryl Mills ◽  
Rebecca L. North ◽  
...  

Engagement of undergraduate students in research has been demonstrated to correlate with improved academic performance and retention. Research experience confers many benefits on participants, particularly foundational skills necessary for graduate school and careers in scientific disciplines. Undergraduate curricula often do not adequately develop collaborative skills that are becoming increasingly useful in many workplaces and research settings. Here, we describe a pilot program that engages undergraduates in research and incorporates learning objectives designed to develop and enhance collaborative techniques and skills in team science that are not typical outcomes of the undergraduate research experience. We conducted a collaborative science project that engaged faculty advisors and upper year undergraduates at four institutions and conducted a review to assess the program’s efficacy. Students developed a broad suite of competencies related to collaborative science, above and beyond the experience of completing individual projects. This model also affords distinct advantages to faculty advisors, including the capacity of the network to collect and synthesize data from different regions. The model for training students to conduct collaborative science at an early stage of their career is scalable and adaptable to a wide range of fields. We provide recommendations for refining and implementing this model in other contexts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaya Garcia Costas ◽  
Devon L. Ragen ◽  
John W. Peters

A five-week research project was designed as part of a summer internship for high school students, and could also be used with educators or in introductory undergraduate research courses. This is a guided-inquiry-based project, framed within the significant issue of supplementing fertilizer use in agriculture with nitrogen-fixing microorganisms. This experience exposes students to how scientists are studying real-world problems; it teaches them basic research techniques, and promotes inquiry-based learning in a real research environment. It also fills a current gap in K-12 education that lacks enough microbiology emphasis. Research interns collect soil samples from various fields and use culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques to test whether there are nitrogen-fixing microorganisms that can be isolated and identified in each soil sample. Students work in a research laboratory making nitrogen-free media; culturing, isolating, and identifying microorganisms; extracting soil DNA; and amplifying the 16S rRNA and nifH genes. We administer a pre-test and a post-test, and students present their research both in a short talk and with a poster. By hosting high school students in a research laboratory and immersing them in laboratory science, we hope to inspire them to pursue a STEM-related career.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Daniel Brady ◽  
Alessio Saviane ◽  
Silvia Cappellozza ◽  
Federica Sandrelli

The domestic silkworm Bombyx mori is extensively studied as a model organism for lepidopteran genetics and has an economic value in silk production. Silkworms also have applications in biomedical and cosmetic industries, and the production of mutant B. mori strains significantly enhances basic and applied silkworm research. In recent years, CRISPR/Cas9 technology is being rapidly adopted as the most efficient molecular tool for generating silkworm lines carrying mutations in target genes. Here we illustrate a complete and efficient workflow to screen, characterize rapidly and follow mutations through generations, allowing the generation of B. mori lines, stably inheriting single CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutations. This approach relies on the use of different molecular methods, the heteroduplex assay, cloning followed by Sanger sequencing, and the amplification refractory mutation system PCR. The use of these methodologies in a sequential combination allows the identification of CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutations in genes mapping on both autosomes and sex chromosomes, and the selection of appropriate individuals to found stable mutant B. mori lines. This protocol could be further applied to screen CRISPR/Cas9 mutations in haploid insects.


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