The lethal poison Ricin (best known as a weapon of bioterrorism), Diphtheria toxin (the causative agent of a highly contagious bacterial disease), and the widely used antibiotic tetracycline have one thing in common: They specifically target the cell's translational apparatus and disrupt protein synthesis.
In this course, we will explore the mechanisms of action of toxins and antibiotics, their roles in everyday medicine, and the emergence and spread of drug resistance. We will also discuss the identification of new drug targets and how we can manipulate the protein synthesis machinery to provide powerful tools for protein engineering and potential new treatments for patients with devastating diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy.
This course is one of many Advanced Undergraduate Seminars offered by the Biology Department at MIT. These seminars are tailored for students with an interest in using primary research literature to discuss and learn about current biological research in a highly interactive setting. Many instructors of the Advanced Undergraduate Seminars are postdoctoral scientists with a strong interest in teaching.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

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:

"Microbiomes are more than just prokaryotes and viruses; they also contain important eukaryotes, including fungi and protists. However, eukaryotes are difficult to study using ‘shotgun’ metagenomics, as their signal is often overwhelmed by the prokaryotes. Some methods use eukaryote-specific marker genes, but they can’t detect eukaryotes that aren’t in the reference marker gene set, and such methods are not compatible with web-based tools for downstream analysis. But CORRAL (Clustering Of Related Reference ALignments) is designed to close those gaps. CORRAL identifies eukaryotes in metagenomic data based on alignments to eukaryote-specific marker genes and Markov clustering. It can detect microbial eukaryotes that are not included in the marker gene reference set. The process is even automated and can be carried out at scale. A recent paper demonstrates CORRAL’s sensitivity and accuracy with simulated datasets, mock community standards, and human microbiome datasets..."

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:

"Cooling towers are home to unique ecosystems of microorganisms. While many are harmless, some are pathogenic. Cooling towers have been linked to many outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, a severe pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria. A new study sought to identify microorganisms associated with cooling tower colonization by Legionella. Researchers identified complex ecological networks highlighting the importance of other bacteria and primary producers. For example, the presence of Brevundimonas bacteria was associated with higher levels of Legionella. Brevundimonas is prey for a Legionella host species, Tetrahymena. But Brevundimonas also directly stimulated the growth of Legionella in laboratory experiments. This study suggests that the Legionella host community is not the only factor that leads to Legionella outbreaks. Entire groups of microorganisms and their interactions play complex roles. Future work is needed to better understand these networks and how they vary over time..."

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

This 10-minute video lesson looks at the beginnings of life on Earth. Life and photosynthesis start to thrive in the Archean Eon. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 39 of 85]

This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey tells the story of researcher Sir Alexander Fleming, whose luck and scientific reasoning led to the groundbreaking discovery of penicillin.

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 translation of messenger RNA, or mRNA, is fundamental to eukaryotic life as we know it. So when mRNA is mistranslated, abnormalities like cancer can arise. That has cancer researchers targeting proteins called eukaryotic initiation factors, or eIFs. eIFs regulate the early stages of translation known as initiation. Research shows that in mammals, eIFs themselves are regulated by a protein complex known as mTORC1. mTORC1 helps stimulate protein production, which in cancer translates to tumor proliferation and survival. Together, eIFs and mTORC1 recruit an array of signaling pathways that serve as the machinery for cancer growth. Researchers are currently developing several ways of stopping that machinery in the fight against cancer, such as phosphorylating the protein eIF2α to induce cancer cell death or inhibiting the protein eIF4A using known small-molecule compounds. Over the past two decades, researchers have made much progress in identifying drugs that target eIFs..."

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

Our second video from the cell biology lesson, part of our anatomy and physiology lecture series.
This video gives a brief summary of the differences between eukaryotes and prokaryotes.
All of our videos can be found at http://www.mrfordsclass.net
The concepts covered in this video include:
•Eukaryotes
•Prokaryotes

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:

"Calcium signaling is critical to cellular processes in a wide variety of cells, making it important for human health and disease Now, researchers have uncovered one of the mechanisms underlying this process in a pathogenic fungus Candida albicans is one of the most important human yeast pathogens, causing illness in immunocompromised patients In yeasts and lower eukaryotes, calcium signaling is tightly regulated by the transcription factor Crz1, which travels to the nucleus following calcium stress C..."

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:

"Wastewater treatment plants are a critical piece of infrastructure that depend on microbes, both resident and incoming. Incoming microbes can be beneficial but may include parasites that need to be removed. Resident microbes, meanwhile, help break down organic waste. While much is known about bacteria in wastewater treatment plants, eukaryotes are frequently overlooked. Recently, researchers examined the whole microbiome of 10 wastewater treatment plants in Switzerland. They utilized metagenomics to measure which microbes were present and metatranscriptomics to analyze their activity. Bacteria were the most numerous— but eukaryotes, particularly protists, showed the most activity, and there was a surprising number and range of active parasites, which were particularly prevalent in the inflow. Network analysis suggested predation by resident microbes likely helped remove parasites..."

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

Ozone layer and eukaryotes show up in the Proterozoic eon. Great oxygenation event (oxygen catastrophe). Created by Sal Khan.