On Sat, 04 Jan 2003 16:06:52 GMT, cyber.guy at iname.com (CyberGuy)
wrote:
>Does anyone teach psychobiology and gene expression as part of your
>undergraduate science courses. If you don't, why not.
>>Christy MacKinnon, PhD
>Professor of Biology
I teach intro biology, animal physiology and neurobiology at the
undergraduate level. I do not include psychobiology or gene
expression in any of these courses because:
My intro course is "organismal and population level" and must include
a tremendous range of material from ecology and evolution to plant and
animal diversity as well as plant physiology. So the time available
for animal physiology is very limited. The entire subject of animal
behavior and behavioral ecology is therefore omitted (as is muscle
contraction and many other "important" topics). The
cellular/molecular intro course is where gene expression is covered.
My physiology course is technically comparative physiology, not
specifically mammalian or human. It covers a tremendous diversity of
material from biochemistry (regulation of metabolic pathways) to
cellular physiology (membrane transport, excitability, signalling
pathways), system level (cardiovascular regulation) and organismal and
environmental (temperature control, metabolic rate and body size,
exercise physiology). Again, the time constraints are really quite
severe. Furthermore, although students do come into the class with
some background in basic biochemistry (at least knowing what
carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins are and some knowledge of basic
glycolysis and the Kreb's cycle) they really do not have enough
molecular biology to really go into the details of gene expression.
It is "enough" simply to indicate that control of protein
concentration, that is, the balance between protein synthesis and
degradation, is an important mechanism to regulate enzyme reaction
rates or to up/down regulate membrane proteins and that second
messenger pathways can promote or repress genes (for example by means
of cAMP and CREB), but that is about it.
My neuro class is even more "elementary" than the animal physiology.
It is often taken by students with only intro biology as background
while physiology is more often taken by students with substantial
background in cellular/molecular courses. I do go into molecular
mechanisms of cell signalling, but again only touch on the molecular
biology of gene expression (as described above). Also, there is a
very popular physiological psych course taught by the psychologists
and there is no reason to duplicate effort -- I emphasize cellular
machinery, they emphasize behavioral and cognitive aspects.
Frankly, I have found that it really doesn't matter all that much
exactly what topics you cover as long as the students are really
learning what it is all about -- understanding the mechanisms and the
experimental basis for elucidating these mechanisms plus understanding
just why those mechanisms are useful in contributing to the life and
fitness of the organism possessing them.
I would be happy to discuss these things with you in more detail
outside the newsgroup (or here, if you prefer). Email me at
rnorman at umjich.edu.
Richard Norman
Assoc Prof Biology
Univ. Michigan - Dearborn