化学学科背景下细胞生物学课程教学的改革和实践

细胞生物学在大学生物相关专业的课程设置中占有重要地位,为提高化学优势学科背景下细胞生物学的教学质量,研究从学生知识掌握能力、知识融合能力和创新能力等三个方面进行相关教学的改革与实践。围绕教学内容和教学课件的优化,学生课外调研和科研写作的开展,学生创新热情的产生,学生动手解决问题及发现新问题的精神面貌转变等方面,阐述教改的主要内容。     

Chemistry comes to the cell: ASCB 2005

Chemical biology continues to find its way into biomedical research in new and exciting ways. The recent American Society of Cell Biology meeting showed how this discipline is making an impact in areas such as cell biology.     

免疫学技术在细胞生物学教学中的应用

免疫学技术在细胞生物学理论与实验课程中具有重要的应用价值,两者的有机结合能使细胞生物学课程教学更丰富形象,有利于教学质量的提高。目前,免疫学技术普遍只停留于细胞生物学理论课本知识教授中,在对学生开展的细胞实验操作课程中应用较少。如能将免疫荧光标记、流式细胞术等相关技术引入到实验教程中,不仅能使细胞实验结果更形象生动,更能拓宽学生知识领域与实验技能,有利于其综合能力的培养。     

Systems and synthetic biology approaches to cell division

Cells proliferate by division into similar daughter cells, a process that lies at the heart of cell biology. Extensive research on cell division has led to the identification of the many components and control elements of the molecular machinery underlying cellular division. Here we provide a brief review of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell division and emphasize how new approaches such as systems and synthetic biology can provide valuable new insight.     

The viral killer system in yeast: from molecular biology to application

Since the initial discovery of the yeast killer system almost 40 years ago, intensive studies have substantially strengthened our knowledge in many areas of biology and provided deeper insights into basic aspects of eukaryotic cell biology as well as into virus-host cell interactions and general yeast virology. Analysis of killer toxin structure, synthesis and secretion has fostered understanding of essential cellular mechanisms such as post-translational prepro-protein processing in the secretory pathway. Furthermore, investigation of the receptor-mediated mode of toxin action proved to be an effective means for dissecting the molecular structure and in vivo assembly of yeast and fungal cell walls, providing important insights relevant to combating infections by human pathogenic yeasts. Besides their general importance in understanding eukaryotic cell biology, killer yeasts, killer toxins and killer viruses are also becoming increasingly interesting with respect to possible applications in biomedicine and gene technology. This review will try to address all these aspects.     

Use of high throughput genomic tools for the study of endothelial cell biology

The endothelium is an active, dynamic and heterogeneous organ. It lines the vessels in every organ system and regulates diverse and important biological functions. Over the past several years researchers have gained enormous insights into endothelial cell function in physiological processes such as coagulation and vascular reactivity, and pathophysiological disease states such as inflammation and atherosclerosis. Despite our expanding knowledge of endothelial cell biology, the molecular mechanisms underlying these functions remain largely unknown. The newly developed high throughput genomic tools and accompanying analytical methods provide powerful approaches for identifying new endothelial cell genes and characterizing their role in health and disease. Here, we review some of the recent genomics and proteomic advances that are providing new methodologies for endothelial cell and vascular biology research.     

Analysis of undergraduate cell biology contents in Brazilian public universities

The enormous amount of information available in cell biology has created a challenge in selecting the core concepts we should be teaching our undergraduates. One way to define a set of essential core ideas in cell biology is to analyze what a specific cell biology community is teaching their students. Our main objective was to analyze the cell biology content currently being taught in Brazilian universities. We collected the syllabi of cell biology courses from public universities in Brazil and analyzed the frequency of cell biology topics in each course. We also compared the Brazilian data with the contents of a major cell biology textbook. Our analysis showed that while some cell biology topics such as plasma membrane and cytoskeleton was present in ～100% of the Brazilian curricula analyzed others such as cell signaling and cell differentiation were present in only ～35%. The average cell biology content taught in the Brazilian universities is quite different from what is presented in the textbook. We discuss several possible explanations for these observations. We also suggest a list with essential cell biology topics for any biological or biomedical undergraduate course. The comparative discussion of cell biology topics presented here could be valuable in other educational contexts.     

Mechanisms of bacterial morphogenesis: Evolutionary cell biology approaches provide new insights

How Darwin's “endless forms most beautiful” have evolved remains one of the most exciting questions in biology. The significant variety of bacterial shapes is most likely due to the specific advantages they confer with respect to the diverse environments they occupy. While our understanding of the mechanisms generating relatively simple shapes has improved tremendously in the last few years, the molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of complex shapes and the evolution of shape diversity are largely unknown. The emerging field of bacterial evolutionary cell biology provides a novel strategy to answer this question in a comparative phylogenetic framework. This relatively novel approach provides hypotheses and insights into cell biological mechanisms, such as morphogenesis, and their evolution that would have been difficult to obtain by studying only model organisms. We discuss the necessary steps, challenges, and impact of integrating “evolutionary thinking” into bacterial cell biology in the genomic era.     

Recent progress in histochemistry and cell biology

Studies published in Histochemistry and Cell Biology in the year 2011 represent once more a manifest of established and newly sophisticated techniques being exploited to put tissue- and cell type-specific molecules into a functional context. The review is therefore the Histochemistry and Cell Biology’s yearly intention to provide interested readers appropriate summaries of investigations touching the areas of tissue biology, developmental biology, the biology of the immune system, stem cell research, the biology of subcellular compartments, in order to put the message of such studies into natural scientific-/human- and also pathological-relevant correlations.     

Stationary phase in yeast

Eukaryotic cell proliferation is controlled by specific growth factors and the availability of essential nutrients. If either of these signals is lacking, cells may enter into a specialized nondividing resting state, known as stationary phase or G(0). The entry into such resting states is typically accompanied by a dramatic decrease in the overall growth rate and an increased resistance to a variety of environmental stresses. Since most cells spend most of their life in these quiescent states, it is important that we develop a full understanding of the biology of the stationary phase/G(0) cell. This knowledge would provide important insights into the control of two of the most fundamental aspects of eukaryotic cell biology: cell proliferation and long-term cell survival. This review will discuss some recent advances in our understanding of the stationary phase of growth in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.     

Surveying the landscape of emerging and understudied cell death mechanisms

Cell death can be a highly regulated process. A large and growing number of mammalian cell death mechanisms have been described over the past few decades. Major pathways with established roles in normal or disease biology include apoptosis, necroptosis, pyroptosis and ferroptosis. However, additional non-apoptotic cell death mechanisms with unique morphological, genetic, and biochemical features have also been described. These mechanisms may play highly specialized physiological roles or only become activated in response to specific lethal stimuli or conditions. Understanding the nature of these emerging and understudied mechanisms may provide new insight into cell death biology and suggest new treatments for diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration.     

Integrating Interactive Computational Modeling in Biology Curricula

While the use of computer tools to simulate complex processes such as computer circuits is normal practice in fields like engineering, the majority of life sciences/biological sciences courses continue to rely on the traditional textbook and memorization approach. To address this issue, we explored the use of the Cell Collective platform as a novel, interactive, and evolving pedagogical tool to foster student engagement, creativity, and higher-level thinking. Cell Collective is a Web-based platform used to create and simulate dynamical models of various biological processes. Students can create models of cells, diseases, or pathways themselves or explore existing models. This technology was implemented in both undergraduate and graduate courses as a pilot study to determine the feasibility of such software at the university level. First, a new (In Silico Biology) class was developed to enable students to learn biology by “building and breaking it” via computer models and their simulations. This class and technology also provide a non-intimidating way to incorporate mathematical and computational concepts into a class with students who have a limited mathematical background. Second, we used the technology to mediate the use of simulations and modeling modules as a learning tool for traditional biological concepts, such as T cell differentiation or cell cycle regulation, in existing biology courses. Results of this pilot application suggest that there is promise in the use of computational modeling and software tools such as Cell Collective to provide new teaching methods in biology and contribute to the implementation of the “Vision and Change” call to action in undergraduate biology education by providing a hands-on approach to biology.     

In vitro Cell Migration and Invasion Assays

Migration is a key property of live cells and critical for normal development, immune response, and disease processes such as cancer metastasis and inflammation. Methods to examine cell migration are very useful and important for a wide range of biomedical research such as cancer biology, immunology, vascular biology, cell biology and developmental biology. Here we use tumor cell migration and invasion as an example and describe two related assays to illustrate the commonly used, easily accessible methods to measure these processes. The first method is the cell culture wound closure assay in which a scratch is generated on a confluent cell monolayer. The speed of wound closure and cell migration can be quantified by taking snapshot pictures with a regular inverted microscope at several time intervals. More detailed cell migratory behavior can be documented using the time-lapse microscopy system. The second method described in this paper is the transwell cell migration and invasion assay that measures the capacity of cell motility and invasiveness toward a chemo-attractant gradient. It is our goal to describe these methods in a highly accessible manner so that the procedures can be successfully performed in research laboratories even just with basic cell biology setup.     

The state of the septin cytoskeleton from assembly to function

Septins are conserved guanine nucleotide-binding proteins that polymerize into filaments at the cell cortex or in association with other cytoskeletal proteins, such as actin or microtubules. As integral players in many morphogenic and signaling events, septins form scaffolds important for the recruitment of the cytokinetic machinery, organization of the plasma membrane, and orientation of cell polarity. Mutations in septins or their misregulation are associated with numerous diseases. Despite growing appreciation for the importance of septins in different aspects of cell biology and disease, septins remain relatively poorly understood compared with other cytoskeletal proteins. Here in this review, we highlight some of the recent developments of the last two years in the field of septin cell biology.     

Potentials of single‐cell biology in identification and validation of disease biomarkers

Single‐cell biology is considered a new approach to identify and validate disease‐specific biomarkers. However, the concern raised by clinicians is how to apply single‐cell measurements for clinical practice, translate the message of single‐cell systems biology into clinical phenotype or explain alterations of single‐cell gene sequencing and function in patient response to therapies. This study is to address the importance and necessity of single‐cell gene sequencing in the identification and development of disease‐specific biomarkers, the definition and significance of single‐cell biology and single‐cell systems biology in the understanding of single‐cell full picture, the development and establishment of whole‐cell models in the validation of targeted biological function and the figure and meaning of single‐molecule imaging in single cell to trace intra‐single‐cell molecule expression, signal, interaction and location. We headline the important role of single‐cell biology in the discovery and development of disease‐specific biomarkers with a special emphasis on understanding single‐cell biological functions, e.g. mechanical phenotypes, single‐cell biology, heterogeneity and organization of genome function. We have reason to believe that such multi‐dimensional, multi‐layer, multi‐crossing and stereoscopic single‐cell biology definitely benefits the discovery and development of disease‐specific biomarkers.     

Laws of biology: why so few?

Finding fundamental organizing principles is the current intellectual front end of systems biology. From a hydrogen atom to the whole cell level, organisms manage massively parallel and massively interactive processes over several orders of magnitude of size. To manage this scale of informational complexity it is natural to expect organizing principles that determine higher order behavior. Currently, there are only hints of such organizing principles but no absolute evidences. Here, we present an approach as old as Mendel that could help uncover fundamental organizing principles in biology. Our approach essentially consists of identifying constants at various levels and weaving them into a hierarchical chassis. As we identify and organize constants, from pair-wise interactions to networks, our understanding of the fundamental principles in biology will improve, leading to a theory in biology.     

The convergence of haemodynamics,genomics, and endothelial structure in studies of the focal origin of atherosclerosis

The completion of the Human Genome Project and ongoing sequencing of mouse, rat and other genomes has led to an explosion of genetics-related technologies that are finding their way into all areas of biological research; the field of biorheology is no exception. Here we outline how two disparate modern molecular techniques, microarray analyses of gene expression and real-time spatial imaging of living cell structures, are being utilized in studies of endothelial mechanotransduction associated with controlled shear stress in vitro and haemodynamics in vivo. We emphasize the value of such techniques as components of an integrated understanding of vascular rheology. In mechanotransduction, a systems approach is recommended that encompasses fluid dynamics, cell biomechanics, live cell imaging, and the biochemical, cell biology and molecular biology methods that now encompass genomics. Microarrays are a useful and powerful tool for such integration by identifying simultaneous changes in the expression of many genes associated with interconnecting mechanoresponsive cellular pathways.     

Host factors involved in retroviral budding and release

The plasma membrane is the final barrier that enveloped viruses must cross during their egress from the infected cell. Here, we review recent insights into the cell biology of retroviral assembly and release; these insights have driven a new understanding of the host proteins, such as the ESCRT machinery, that are used by retroviruses to promote their final separation from the host cell. We also review antiviral host factors such as tetherin, which can directly inhibit the release of retroviral particles. These studies have illuminated the role of the lipid bilayer as the unexpected target for virus restriction by the innate immune response.