The PhenoMeNal Gateway is the portal to your own PhenoMeNal Cloud Research Environment (CRE) containing an array of essential metabolomics applications. This course will give you an overview of PhenoMeNal Gateway, how to create your cloud research environment, and how to use the PhenoMeNal Galaxy instance for workflows for metabolomics data.

By the end of the course you will be able to:
Describe what PhenoMeNal is and when to use it
Create your cloud research environment
Use the PhenoMeNal Galaxy instance

Understanding how the same genotype can still result in variation of phenotype based on environment.

In this activity, students are assigned different alleles of the gene for phenylalanine hydroxylase to research using OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man). They are then asked to both explain and illustrate how this mutation may cause the disease phenylketonuria (PKU).

How and where photosynthesis evolved in the ancestors of cyanobacteria (along with a discussion of endosymbiosis).

This course provides a basic introduction to the field of phylogenetics, with an emphasis on how to read and interpret phylogenetic trees.

By the end of the course you will be able to:
Describe several applications of phylogenetics
Explain how to read simple trees
Identify major stages in phylogenetic analyses
Access bioinformatics tools for phylogenetics

Students receive information about cladistics and apply this phylogenetic approach to two problems, collecting data, determining whether traits are ancestral or derived, and using this information to select the most parsimonious tree.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The 16S rRNA gene is widely used for bacterial phylogenetics, species delineation, and microbiome research. Historically, researchers assumed that sequence variations in this gene were only due to speciation and inheritance. But there are reports of recombination events and an unreliable phylogenetic signal. To examine this directly, researchers performed four intra-genus analyses and one inter-genus analysis using pathogenic and core human microbiome genera. In all analyses, the 16S rRNA gene was recombinant and subject to horizontal gene transfer. At the intra-genus level, the 16S rRNA gene averaged 50.7% concordance with the species phylogeny, one of the lowest of the core genes. Further analysis found that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) count was a major factor influencing concordance. 690 ± 110 SNPs would be required to reach 80% concordance, but the average SNP count for the 16S rRNA gene was only 254..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Cyanobacteria blooms in freshwater ecosystems are difficult to predict and can be harmful to humans and animals. Microcystis is a genus of cyanobacteria that can cause these toxic blooms. They form close associations with heterotrophic bacteria - their microbiome, but the details of these associations are not well understood. To examine this relationship, researchers characterized the genetic diversity of over 100 Microcystis colonies. They identified 18 distinct Microcystis genotypes. The genetic diversity was greater between colonies than within them, suggesting that Microcystis forms colonies via clonal expansion. Each Microcystis genotype had its own microbiome composition and related genotypes had similar microbiomes. Two of the nine most prevalent colony-associated bacteria genera, Roseomonas and Rhodobacter, showed strong signs of co-phylogeny with Microcystis. These closely associated bacteria may be expanding the metabolic capabilities of Microcystis..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Textbook for ANTH 101: Introduction to Physical Anthropology at College of the Canyons
Examines the evolution of the human species and non-human primates primarily from the biological perspective. Topics include human heredity and population genetics, primate behavior and conservation, the human fossil record, and modern human variation.

This optional field trip is designed to augment the in-class learning experience in introductory physical geology by providing students the opportunity to see firsthand local geological features and understand their context in the long-term tectonic evolution of the western United States. The university is conveniently located in a portion of the American west where a plethora of geological features are readily accessible over a total field trip duration of 6 hours. Over a total of 6 field stops, students are presented with an opportunity to observe features relevant to topics learned in class involving rock types, volcanic features (lava flows and ash fall deposits), faults and folds, mass wasting features, catastrophic flood deposits (Bonneville and Missoula floods), and loess deposits.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

The central point of this course is to provide a physical basis that links the structure of materials with their properties, focusing primarily on metals. With this understanding in hand, the concepts of alloy design and microstructural engineering are also discussed, linking processing and thermodynamics to the structure and properties of metals.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The gut microbiome comprises a diverse range of eukaryotic microorganisms, archaea, bacteria, and viruses that influence our health and wellness. The most abundant type of microbe in the gut – viruses that infect bacteria, called phages – are highly diverse, individual-specific, and stable over time. Phages have gained attention recently as modulators of the gut microbiome and health, but inducible prophages are difficult to identify in bacterial genomes, making them challenging to study. A new study presents a method for using high-throughput sequencing data to locate inducible prophages. Researchers used a well-established model system to validate their methods, including phage-to-host ratios and phage location in the reference genome. After validation, they expanded their methods to a murine gut model microbiota and were able to locate five novel inducible prophages, quantify their activity, and show signatures of lateral transduction potential..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Walking up and down the hallways of Davey Lab at Penn State, you can find astronomers searching for and characterizing exoplanets, monitoring supernovae and other exploding stars, and measuring the details of the accelerating expansion of the Universe to determine the nature of dark energy. In Astro 801, we learn that with only the ability to measure the light from these distant, unreachable objects, we can still determine how the Solar System, stars, galaxies, and the Universe formed and evolved since the Big Bang. We are all citizens of the Universe, and in fact, you are made of starstuff. Come learn where the atoms in your body came from, and what will happen to them long after we are gone.

This is a field investigation where students observe plants in a school forest setting. Students then compare adaptations of plants from different parts of the forest.

The H-R diagram is a scatter graph of stars, a plot of stellar absolute magnitude or luminosity versus temperature or stellar classification. It is an important astronomical tool for understanding how stars evolve over time. Stellar evolution cannot be studied by observing individual stars as most changes occur over millions and billions of years. Astrophysicists observe numerous stars at various stages in their evolutionary history to determine their changing properties and probable evolutionary tracks across the H-R diagram. In this activity, students plot both maxima and minima with corresponding stellar classifications for several variables, and then identify the type of variability: Cepheid, RR Lyrae, Mira or Semiregular. This activity includes background information, a teacher guide, a student activity, and accompanying worksheets. The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and The Chandra X-Ray mission have collaborated to develop this activity.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The ability to label and manipulate proteins in the body is essential to modern biological research. Unfortunately, current methods, such as tagging with antibodies, are often inefficient and expensive. Even worse, researchers are realizing that many of the antibodies available just simply don’t work. Now, a new molecular tool could help researchers break through that barrier. Researchers in the Soderling Laboratory of the Cell Biology Department at Duke University, have developed a high-throughput system capable of modifying entire panels of proteins using a new dual-vector gene-editing approach. Dubbed Homology-independent Universal Genome Engineering, this system allows for the dynamic visualization and functional manipulation of proteins both in vitro and in vivo, including in neurons. This is HiUGE. HiUGE isn’t the first protein-modifying system to rely on gene editing..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Political Economists are concerned with the allocation of scarce resources in a world of infinite wants and needs. In order to allocate these resources, politics are used within a state to provide for the people. Political economy is the study of the relationships between individuals and society, and more specifically, the relationships between citizens and states.

Political economy is a study of philosophy and ideology that studies the evolution of political and economic ideas. Political economy is a mixture of politics, economics, sociology, philosophy, and history, which all bring together evidence to the study of how humans exist within societies. Political economists study political ideology, economic structure, human interaction, human nature, and theories in philosophical thought. It is a study that studies not only the mechanics of a particular structure, but also the reasoning behind why a structure is regarded to be the best by various people with different beliefs.

The study of political economics can be split into two different sections, one which is Classical Political Economy and the other which is Modern Political Economy. The classical branch studies range from the conservative philosophers such as Machiavelli to liberals such as Adam Smith to the critiquers of liberalism such as Marx. The modern branch studies range from social liberals such as Keynes to modern political economists whose works deal with a multitude of issues including foreign trade and globalization.

This is a page on the Fast Plants website, describing the Polycot variety of Fast Plants (Brassica rapa). Two generations of the Polycot variety are available, each with a different % of expression of the polycot trait. This page includes suggestions for investigations and teaching applications using this seed variety, including use as a model organism in demonstrating artificial selection.