Greg Spicer - US grants

This Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement (UFE) project provides for each of the next two years: an intense fourteen-day laboratory short course, Molecular Genetics & Evolutionary Biology, in the summer; a 4-day follow-up session the following summer; and on-going technical and material support. The format evolved from prior national Chautauqua and UFE courses. Twenty-two faculty are selected each year from a national applicant pool comprised of faculty from community colleges, 4-year liberal arts colleges and universities, comprehensive universities, and research universities. Four pre-service teachers are selected from SFSU. Participants learn the fundamentals of molecular biology through lectures and demonstrations, and conduct a series of experiments to develop skill in PCR amplification, restriction enzyme analysis, and various gel separation techniques. Participants investigate "thematic" research projects in research groups of six composed of a mix of a pre-service teacher, a mentor teacher and faculty from community colleges and four-year institutions. Seminar topics include the use of molecular techniques to investigate procaryote, vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant systems, the incorporation of these techniques into the undergraduate laboratory, and examples of effective teaching practices. As a final exercise, each of the preservice teachers and faculty create teaching modules incorporating the new laboratory and teaching techniques developed during the workshop. Following the course the SFSU faculty is available via telephone and email to help participants incorporate molecular techniques and analysis into their research projects and their undergraduate courses. The instructional materials developed in prior courses as well as materials developed by new UFE participants are being placed on an SFSU/UFE web site.

The mitochondrion in eukaryotes is the organelle responsible for cellular respiration, and is unique among animal organelles in that it possess its own DNA coding genome. In the fruitfly genus Drosophila, as in humans, this genome consists of a circular molecule about 16 Kb in size, which is maternally inherited and non-recombining. It has been noted that several human diseases appear to be related to mutational aberrations in the mitochondrial DNA genome but, our understanding of the normal mutational processes occurring in mtDNA are poorly understood. Consequently, knowledge concerning the usual mutational process in a model system, such as Drosophila, would be of great interest. To understand the mutational variation found in Drosophila, sequence variation at eight protein coding mitochondrial genes within natural populations and among different species will be examined to determine the factors influencing the levels of variation. This will be accomplished by testing the evidence in two separate ways: (1) By examining whether sequence variation observed within populations of Drosophila is due to the accumulation of neutral mutations, or the result of mutational substitutions that are maintained by natural selection. This will be tested by using population genetic models based on neutral theory and coalescent theory. (2) By examining the factors affecting sequence variation in these genes among different species of Drosophila, which will be tested by using comparative phylogenetic tree methods.