[bioundgrd] Biology Advanced Undergraduate Seminars – Spring 2020

[Crystal Boateng]

Please see the message below from Professor Horvitz regarding Advanced Undergraduate Seminars for the Spring term. You can find course information here: https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/advanced-undergraduate-seminars/
Best,
Crystal Boateng




TO:     MIT Biology Majors
FROM:   H. Robert Horvitz, Professor of Biology
DATE:   December 6, 2019

        I am writing to inform you of an exciting offering from the Department of Biology for the 2020 spring semester:  two very current seminar courses, 7.341 and 7.342, Advanced Undergraduate Seminars.  A listing of the courses, instructors, and brief course descriptions is enclosed.  The topics are different and broad and encompass areas of genetics, genomics, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, cell biology, epigenetics, cancer biology, parasitology, therapeutics and human disease.

A student can take any number of these courses.  The courses, which generally involve four to eight students, are for 6 units, graded pass/fail, and meet two hours each week. The focus is on reading and discussing the primary research literature.  Most courses have one short written assignment and one oral presentation.  Some include field trips to MIT research laboratories or to commercial sites using technologies discussed in the courses. The level of each course will be tailored to the students who enroll. Because of the small size of these courses, we expect students not to drop these courses once they have begun.

        These courses offer a number of special features:  small class size, a high degree of personal contact with the instructor(s), a focus on the primary research literature, and an opportunity to discuss current problems in biology interactively.  I believe these courses greatly enrich an undergraduate’s experience.  There are limited alternative opportunities available to undergraduates to interact closely with instructors who are experienced full-time researchers; to learn to read, understand, analyze and critique primary research papers; and to engage in the type of stimulating discussions and debates that characterize how science is really done.  Most advanced MIT undergraduates (generally juniors and seniors) have been sufficiently exposed to the basics of biology to be able to read the primary literature and appreciate both methodologies and cutting-edge advances.  These courses have two goals:  first, to expose students to the kind of thinking that is central to contemporary biological research; and second, to impart specific knowledge in particular areas of biology.  These courses are designed to be intellectually stimulating and also to provide excellent preparation for a variety of future careers that require an understanding both of what modern biology is and of how it is done.  Students who have taken Advanced Undergraduate Seminars in the past (different specific courses, same general design) have been enormously enthusiastic about their experiences.

         I am writing to you before Registration Day to encourage you to consider enrolling in one of these seminar courses.  Please feel free to contact any of the instructors to learn more about their courses and in particular to discuss possible meeting days and times if those listed are not possible for you.

             To learn more about the Advanced Undergraduate Seminars to be offered during the Spring 2020 semester, please check our website (https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/advanced-undergraduate-seminars/) and/or contact the instructors.


Advanced Undergraduate Seminars
2019-2020

Spring 2020

7.341  How Parasites Hijack Their Hosts: Mechanistic Exploration of Host-Pathogen Interactions
Instructors: Elizabeth Costa (liz at wi.mit.edu<mailto:liz at wi.mit.edu>, 617-324-5869, laboratory of Sebastian Lourido)
Jon McGinn (mcginn at mit.edu<mailto:mcginn at mit.edu>, 617-258-6455, laboratory of Becky Lamason)
Spring 2020. Wednesdays, 11 am-1 pm. (Class day and time are flexible.)  Room 68-150.

Parasites have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to hijack host cell biology to promote infection and survival. Obligate intracellular parasites are supremely adapted to life inside host cells and offer fascinating systems to study host-pathogen interactions. This course will explore the biology of parasites and examine the mechanisms employed by diverse obligate intracellular parasites to exploit and manipulate their hosts. Specifically, we will examine the strategies that intracellular pathogens employ to invade host cells, establish an intracellular niche, avoid host immune detection, and disseminate through host organisms and populations. For example,Plasmodium, which causes malaria leading to almost 500,000 deaths worldwide per year, has evolved a number of strategies to survive and promote transmission to humans, including altering the feeding behavior of infected mosquitos. Intracellular bacteria, such as the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes, can hijack host actin, which enables them to move freely in the host cytoplasm and spread to neighboring cells. Even in less complex systems, some bacteriophage have recently been shown to evade bacterial immune response systems (such as CRISPR-Cas) by creating a nucleus-like shell to protect their DNA from attack. By surveying bacteriophage, prokaryotic, and eukaryotic intracellular parasites, we will explore the commonalities and differences among the mechanisms evolved by diverse organisms to subvert their respective host cells. These topics will be covered through critical reading and discussion of both classic and modern primary research literature. Throughout this course, students will learn principles of experimental design, data analysis, and how to read and critique papers in the field of biomedicine. Students will also have the opportunity to visit a local biotechnology company or an academic laboratory to see how cutting-edge techniques are used to uncover novel biologies of intracellular parasites.


7.342  The Seeds and the Soil: Roles of Tumor Heterogeneity and the Tumor Microenvironment in Cancer Metastasis
Instructors:  Yun Zhang (y.zhang at wi.mit.edu<mailto:y.zhang at wi.mit.edu>, 919-600-8633, laboratory of Bob Weinberg)
                     Arthur Lambert (alambert at wi.mit.edu<mailto:alambert at wi.mit.edu>, 603-978-2866, laboratory of Bob Weinberg)
Spring 2020. Thursdays, 10 am – noon. (Class day and time are flexible.) Room 68-150.

Tumors grow and evolve over many years or decades, sometimes progressing to the lethal stage of metastasis, in which cancer cells that have left the primary tumor establish new growths in organs throughout the body.  For example, in late-stage breast cancer patients, tumor cells frequently migrate to the bone, liver, lung or brain, forming tumor masses that impair the function of these vital organs. Metastatic disease is responsible for the vast majority of deaths associated with cancer and is considered incurable, yet our understanding of how metastases arise is still developing.  The path from a normal cell to a primary tumor, driven by genetic mutations, has been extensively mapped over the past 40 years and is reasonably well understood.  But how do some primary tumors progress to the metastatic stage?  And, when they do, what determines the location where metastases develop?  Accumulating evidence suggests that epigenetic changes, which are not driven by particular mutations but are hijacked from latent developmental programs, play an essential role in enabling tumor cells to form metastases. These mechanisms change both the intrinsic characteristics of tumor cells as well as their interactions with surrounding “normal” cells, reshaping the microenvironment, at both the primary and metastatic sites, to favor tumor growth and escape from immune attacks. We will begin this course by introducing various concepts and models that have been proposed to explain how cancer cells disseminate from the primary tumor to distant anatomical sites.  Then we will turn our attention to two critical factors that influence cancer metastasis.  First, we will discuss how cancer cells of the same tumor (the seeds) are actually quite heterogeneous and plastic, and consider how these phenotypic differences impact metastatic spread.  Next, we will examine how components of the tumor and tissue microenvironment (the soil) can support or resist metastatic colonization.  We will explore these frontiers through analysis and discussion of relevant primary research articles, with an emphasis on mechanisms of metastasis that act across different cancer types. Students will gain a broad understanding of the field of cancer metastasis, including state-of-the-art techniques such as single-cell RNA sequencing, lineage-tracing, and CRISPR-based approaches that are being used to address pressing questions in the field. Most importantly, through these discussions students will develop the ability to critically analyze research papers and to logically design experiments to explore scientifically important questions. Students will also have the opportunity to tour a nearby company developing novel approaches to treat metastatic cancer.

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