Special : Education Workshop

Abs # 60003: Exploration of plant cells by undergraduate and high school students: Research in endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi organization and dynamics.

Presenter:	Griffing, Lawrence , griffing@neo.tamu.edu
Authors	Griffing, Lawrence  (A)   Lane, Cleveland  (B)   McDowell, Jacqueline  (C)   Saint-Jore-Dupas, Claude  (D)   Hawes, Chris  (E)
Affiliations:	(A): Biology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845-3258 (B): Department of Biology, Prairie View A&M University, Prarie View, TX 77446 (C): Fort Bend ISD, Sugar Land, TX 77479 (D): Universite de Rouen, Batiment extension Biologie, UFR des Sciences 76821 Mont-Saint-Aignan, France (E): Molecular Biology Department, Oxford-Brookes Polytechnic, Oxford, UK
Web Site:	http://griffing.tamu.edu

In an on-going project by the ITS Center (Information Technology in Science Center, an NSF Center for Learning and Teaching), undergraduate and high school teachers partner with research scientists to bring science into the undergraduate freshman and high school biology laboratories. Using IT-based multimedia data sets, students engage in research projects analyzing cytoplasmic movements in plant cells. One objective is to produce a broader impact of the research in the lab of Dr. Griffing focussed on the organization of endocytic and secretory membranes in plant cells. Data sets from confocal and wide-field deconvolution microscopy are supplied and/or acquired by teachers during a three-week summer research session in the lab. These data are then viewed, questioned, and analyzed by the students, then returned to the scientist and graduate students in the ITS for analysis and incorporation into the research project. In the project being developed, students develop concepts of organization and function of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi using an increasingly sophisticated set of analogies that could be used as the foundation for hypothesis building. For example, one hypothesis is that ER would show less branching in regions of rapid cytoplasmic streaming. To test this hypothesis students use ImageJ to quantify the number of branch points in regions of rapid versus slow cytoplasmic streaming. Cell biology research of this nature requires extensive scaffolding so that the student can translate what they are seeing in the research to what is presented in the text. Developing these scaffolding tools is a collaborative effort of the scientist, teacher, and ITS graduate students.