UC Toxics News: Fall 2001
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Lead Campus Short Courses Bring Together Disciplines, Foster New Collaborations by Mika Pringle Tolson

 

 

 

 

Interdisciplinary short courses offered by TSR&TP's lead campus programs bring students and faculty together, foster research collaborations, and encourage cross-disciplinary interactions. Three of TSR&TP's lead campuses have developed courses which examine problems in coastal toxicology, functional genomics and proteomics, and problems in ecotoxicology from a watershed perspective. Each course is open to students in the lead campus programs as well as to other interested students, space permitting. To create a retreat atmosphere, the multiday courses are held in remote locations. These courses present a major opportunity to bridge the gaps between individual campuses and foster significant intercampus research collaboration, as well as collaborative efforts between different lead campus programs.

Students in the 2001 Coastal Toxicology Lead Campus short course perform experiments at Bodega Marine Lab. Courtesy photo.

Problems in Coastal Toxicology
The Coastal Toxicology Lead Campus short course focuses on integrating ecology with chemistry and toxicology by looking at a real problem in a field setting. Recent courses have studied the effects of creosote pier pilings on the aquatic organisms surrounding the pier. The week long course takes place at Bodega Marine Laboratory, on the Sonoma Coast north of San Francisco. UC course credit is offered to participants through the Davis campus. Graduate students from UC campuses at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Davis and Berkeley in various disciplines attend each fall. Five faculty and up to four teaching assistants (graduate students who have previously taken the course) volunteer to teach. Students receive instruction in the principles of toxicology and ecology, and also perform ecological studies in the field and in the lab. At the end of the week-long course, the students summarize their results in a series of oral presentations at the Coastal Toxicology Retreat, a weekend meeting of all the faculty and students involved with the Coastal Toxicology program.

Students who have taken the coastal toxicology course get a chance to experience research from the perspective of different disciplines and gain an appreciation for each other's fields. The course helps to build a network for the program. Students often maintain contact after their week together, and many collaborations have directly resulted from their interactions during the course and at the retreat.

Participants from the course in Los Alamos take a break from class. Left to right: Fabienne Reisen (UCR), Danny Kim and Tony Machado (UCLA), Drew Olaharski (sitting) and Daniela Oltean (UCR). Courtesy photo.

Functional Genomics and Proteomics
The lead campus program in Mechanisms of Toxicity, a consortium of UC Los Angeles, UC Riverside, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), presented its first short course on Functional Genomics and Proteomics in June 2001 at LANL in New Mexico. The format of the course had morning and evening lectures and laboratory demonstrations and other activities in the afternoons. The laboratory facilities can accommodate up to 20 participants. Trainees and faculty of the Toxic Mechanisms Lead Campus have priority, with additional slots available to members of the other TSR&TP Lead Campuses. The course will be offered every two years, with the next one in spring 2003.

The first genomics and proteomics course was attended by 8 predoctoral trainees and 8 faculty from UC Los Angeles and UC Riverside with disciplines ranging from Chemistry and Environmental Toxicology to Molecular Pharmacology and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. The course was regarded very highly by the participants. They enjoyed the chance to perform hands on work in the facilities at LANL. A number of collaborations between UCLA or UCR Lead Campus faculty or trainees and LANL scientists started as a result of the interactions occurring at the course. Chester Rodriguez in Dr. Arthur Cho's laboratory (UCLA) will go to Los Alamos to learn gene chip (RNA expression) technology with the objective of determining which genes are activated by toxic quinones in yeast. Dr. Robert Schiestl (UCLA) has initiated a collaboration with Dr. Michael Altherr (LANL) on the genetic control and the effects of environmental exposure on DNA repeat stability. Ling Wang, a trainee in the laboratory of Dr. David Eastmond at UCR, has initiated interactions with Dr. Michael Altherr (LANL) to use gene expression arrays to identify changes in expression occurring following exposure to topoisomerase II inhibitors. Yutaka Maeda and Daniela Oltean (trainees at UCR with Dr. Frances Sladek and Dr. Sarjeet Gill, respectively), have been working with Dr. Tom Hunter and other members of the Proteomics group at LANL to use state-of-the-art mass spectrometry techniques (MALDI/TOF) to assist in protein identification.

Problems in Ecotoxicology
"Problems in Ecotoxicology" has been developed by the Ecotoxicology Lead Campus Program as a one week course to be held at the Tahoe Research Group (TRG) facility in Lake Tahoe beginning September 2002. Ecotoxicology program faculty will create and teach the course in modules of stream ecology, watershed principles, lake dynamics, air quality, and basic toxicology and environmental chemistry. Lectures will be offered in the morning, followed by field demonstrations and lab exercises in the afternoon. There will also be a trip to Leviathon Mine to look at problems with contamination in the watershed, a tour of the engineered wetlands in Tahoe City, and possibly a cruise on the lake in the TRG's research vessel. Up to 20 spaces will be available in the course for graduate students in the Ecotoxicology program. The course will also be open to people from other campuses and programs. Students will make presentations on the last day of the course. In addition, they will be required to finish a project and turn in a final paper at the end of fall quarter. Participants will receive three units of course credit at UC Davis.

TSR&TP Perspective
These short courses directly address the second "T" in our acronym, which reminds us that we are a teaching program as well as a research unit. The courses are an important component of our mission, and reflect our recent attempts to encourage our new and established lead campuses to find areas of complementary expertise to better leverage our overall research efforts.

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