Following is a list of Mentors who have offered to work with 181H students to explore papers or media topics. You'll set up ~weekly meetings with them and will be expected to bring your A-game in terms of preparation, thoughtfulness, and participation. If you wish to participate, you'll need to e-mail your 181H Instructor (Bruce, Lisa, Vince) your request by Friday Morning, Oct. 23. Please choose ONE (two tops) whose offering interests you and whose schedule (if details are present) might align with yours. Also indicate if you'd like to participate even if you don't get your first choice, and your preferred meeting time [should be a subset of the mentor's listed times].

Times shown are targets when these folks can become available, not the planned meeting time. Generally, you'll be meeting weekly for about an hour. If there are several times listed, indicated the one that fits your schedule best.

Prof. Gail Burd: Processing of Olfactory Sensory Information
In 2004, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Linda Buck and Richard Axel for their discovery of olfactory receptor genes (see http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2004/press.html). Working together at Columbia University, they demonstrated that the olfactory receptors for odorant molecules comprise a very large family of genes (over 1000 genes). Furthermore, each olfactory receptor cell only expresses one (or very few) genes, and thus 999 genes are repressed from expression. How this is regulated and how the information is processed by the olfactory receptor cells and the olfactory system as a whole to provide odorant information is an exciting and active area of research.

We'll read the Nobel prize paper, a few review articles, and discuss other relevant articles in my section of this honors course.
Availability: M 5:30-7:00 LSS240

Tuan Cao: Metabolic scaling is a HOT topic in ecology, physiology, and physics! It all boils down to understanding why metabolic rate scales with organism size to the ¾ power. Some studies, including those from the authors of this paper, have shown that this scaling relation extends from individual mitochondrion and theoretically up to the level of ecosystems! So why is ¾ scaling so universal in biology and is it the ‘theory of everything’ in ecology?
Paper: "Life's Universal Scaling Laws"
Availability: Mon, Wed 9-noon

Prof. Johnny Fares (Johnny is only taking students from the section of Vince's that he spoke to live)
Papers: Lysosomal storage disorders, Vellodi, 2004 (British Journal of Haematology, 128, 413–431)
Pryor and Luzio, Delivery of endocytosed membrane proteins to the lysosome, 2009 (Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1793 (2009) 615624)
Availability: T, R @ 3:30; M, W, F @ noon

Chris Goforth: Jacobs ME (1955) Studies on territorialism and sexual selection in
dragonflies. Ecology 36:566–586. Chris writes: "A guy shot dragonflies with BB guns as part of his experimental design!  What's better than that?  It's one of the more exciting long papers I've read.  This paper is cited ALL THE TIME in dragonfly studies and prompted the majority of the huge number of territoriality studies that are available today, so it is definitely a classic in odonotology.
Availability: Mondays 11:30-3:30; Wed. 9-noon.

Dr. Chris Haney: Many strains of bacteria have evolved mechanisms for resisting the effects of antibiotic therapy, much to the chagrin of clinicians. Because this ability has only been useful since the advent of these therapies, it stands to reason that they evolved quite recently. How this ability arose so quickly, and the mechanisms by which it is accomplished is critical to preventing the obsolescence of antibiotics and the subsequent return to a state where such therapies were not an option (that is, a time where an infected cut could prove fatal). Yang et al propose an origin and mechanism for the ability of so-called "multi-drug-resistant bacteria to resist a wide range of antibiotic compounds. The answer, it seems, involves a phenomenon that would have gotten a biologist laughed out of a lecture a mere 10 years ago: the ability of bacteria to talk to one another.
Yang /et al/. (2006) Quorum Sensing and Multidrug Transporters in Eschichia coli. /Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA/. 103(7):2386
Availability: W8-11; Thu 11-2

Dr. Angie Hilliker: Investigating claims about a link between autism and vaccines. Starting paper: Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009; 48:456-461 Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses. Jeffrey S. Gerber and Paul A. Offit
Availability: Thu, Fri. before noon

Dr. Susan Jorstad: The publication of discovery of "Ardi" (Ardipithecus ramidus)
A nearly complete fossil skeleton that represents the oldest-yet discover hominid
(or human ancestor) has received a lot of media attention, including radio, TV,
newpapers, science blogs. What do these media productions focus on? Aremai they
clarifying what is known about human evolution, or perpetuating misconceptions
about it? We can also look into the discovery of Homo floresiensis (the
so-called "Hobbit" hominids) in Indonesia in 2004, if students are interested.
Availability: MWF 11-3

Dr. Angel Pimentel: "A Gene Complex Controlling Segmentation in Drosophila" Nature 276: 565.
This review article details the original description of the Homeobox genes, now known to be universal players in setting up animal body plans. Using this paper as a first step we'll see 1) The importance of stating a clear hypothesis based on observation. 2) The elegance of a well designed experiment. 3) An experiment doesn't have to be complicated to have an impact in science. 4) How an experiment so simple, and the conclusions derived from it, withstood the re-testing of time by more modern sophisticated molecular techniques.
Availability: MWF 2-3:00

Prof. Linda Restifo: Developing analytical reasoning skills.  An interest in genetics would be a plus, but all students will be more interested in genetics once they read and understand this paper!

Konopka RJ, Benzer S. (1971) Clock mutants of Drosophila melanogaster. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. Sep;68(9):2112-6.

This is a seminal PNAS paper from Seymour Benzer's lab that reports the first set of single-gene mutations (in the period gene) disrupting circadian activity rhythms in Drosophila.  It established
Drosophila as a model for behavior genetics and set the stage for working out the molecular components of the circadian clock.

The big-picture issues we will discuss are:
1. Complex behavior can be analyzed by single-gene mutations in a simple genetic model organism.
2. The power of a mutant phenotype, especially if it is amenable to quantitative analysis.
3. Potential limitations of extrapolating from one species to another when they are far apart on the phylogenetic tree.
Availability: Will set up a time with the group once chosen

Prof. Frans Tax: Binding of brassinosteroids to the extracellular domain of plant
receptor kinase

BRI1.Kinoshita T, Caño-Delgado A, Seto H, Hiranuma S, Fujioka S, Yoshida S,
Chory J.Nature. 2005 Jan 13;433(7022):167-71.
This paper demonstrated that a transmembrane receptor, BRI1, directly binds steroids in Arabidopsis, a plant.  Therefore, steroid perception in plants is distinguished from animals, where steroids are bound in the cytoplasm or nucleus. The demonstration of direct binding of steroids to BRI1 in this paper
supported lots of indirect genetic evidence that BRI1 is the major receptor for steroids.
Availability: MWF 11-1; gone next week so Friday 11-1 may be best