|
Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Neuroscience Program and Biodiversity: Biomedical Links Initiative
Summary: Baldomero Olivera's laboratory conducts research using the venomous predatory cone snail Conus. His HHMI program involves two projects: a biodiversity education initiative and an undergraduate program in neuroscience for majors in diverse science and engineering disciplines.
Project Summary
We will undertake two projects: an initiative based on biodiversity and an undergraduate program in neuroscience. Because our research program is dependent on the biodiversity of the marine environment, it provides novel opportunities for outreach to young students and the nonscientific community.
The biodiversity initiative is deliberately exploratory and open-ended in character: the long-term goal is to teach very young students and the general public about the diversity of life, in a manner that is as scientifically informed as possible. Initially, we will target undergraduate students from academic institutions in locations with particularly high marine biodiversity. A specific goal is to make these students aware of the rich natural history in the marine environment around them and that the access their community has to unique biological resources could open special opportunities for them.
One objective of the initiative is to give the undergraduates involved a direct laboratory research experience leading to a deeper understanding of science, and for them to consider a career in the sciences. These students will be the conduit for conveying information, particularly to grade school children and the general public. Such an initiative is one way to be proactive in addressing conservation issues related to the marine environment. In addition to specifically targeting students and the public where there is high marine biodiversity, materials from our research program will be adapted more broadly to stimulate interest in science in young children and the lay public.
Among the specific targeted communities for the biodiversity initiative will be the native Hawaiian community in Oahu; this aspect of the project will be carried out in collaboration with faculty and undergraduate students at Chaminade University. A second targeted community will be fishing villages in the Philippines, to be carried out in collaboration with faculty and undergraduate students at the University of the Philippines. For the Philippine fishing villages, the issue is to go beyond seeing marine biodiversity as objects to be harvested for a living. For the native Hawaiian community, a major factor will be to stimulate interest in science within the context of Hawaiian cultural identity; biodiversity will be introduced using materials directly relevant to Hawaiian culture.
The second initiative is to establish an undergraduate neuroscience program at the University of Utah; the desired academic end point is to be able to provide interested majors from diverse disciplines in science and engineering (mathematics, physics, chemical and electrical engineering, computer science, biology, and chemistry) with an opportunity for in-depth exposure to neuroscience. These students will have the option to obtain a minor in neuroscience. The program will be designed to be sufficiently interdisciplinary to serve students who major in very disparate scientific fields. To minor in neuroscience, students will be required to do independent research in a neuroscience laboratory. The goal is to bring undergraduates from different disciplines, and with different intellectual viewpoints, into the field of neuroscience.
Research Summary
Our laboratory has discovered and characterized peptide ligands targeted to ion channels. These are found in the venoms of the approximately 700 species of predatory cone snails (marine gastropods that belong to the genus Conus). The approximately 70 cone snail species that hunt fish are a particular focus of investigation; every Conus species expresses a distinct repertoire of about 100 different venom peptides, suggesting that there are greater than 50,000 different peptides in these venoms. The Conus peptides developed by our laboratory have become widely used tools for basic research in neuroscience, and they unexpectedly proved to have direct diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Of the first 30 Conus peptides characterized, mostly by undergraduate students in our laboratory, 10 percent have reached human clinical trials, and one has become an FDA-approved drug for intractable pain.
Last updated October 2008
|
