Sustainability and Justice: Challenges and Opportunities for an Open STEM Education.

Open educational resources, or OER, are teaching materials that reside in the public domain and are available under an open license. While the creation of high-quality materials and cyberinfrastructure to share these resources is important, OER are much more than static resource repositories. Vibrant OER communities function as collaboration hubs and often include librarians, instructional technologists, instructors, education researchers, funders, open-source software developers, and college administrators.

Elevated inbreeding in Heliconia tortuosa is determined by tropical forest stand age, isolation and loss of hummingbird functional diversity.

Forest conversion and habitat loss are major threats to biological diversity. Forest regeneration can mitigate the negative effects of old-growth forest loss on species diversity, but less is known about the extent to which forest loss reduces genetic diversity in remnant populations and whether secondary forests play a role in the maintenance of genetic diversity. We quantified genetic diversity in a tropical hummingbird-pollinated understorey herb, Heliconia tortuosa, across a landscape mosaic of primary and secondary forest regrowth.

Three genes involved in the oxidative burst are closely linked in the genome of the snail, Biomphalaria glabrata.

Allelic variation at the Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) locus has been shown to be associated with resistance of the snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, to infection by the trematode parasite, Schistosoma mansoni. SOD1 catalyses the production of hydrogen peroxide, a known cytotoxic component of the oxidative burst used in defence against pathogens. In our laboratory population of B.

Effects of Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (sod1) genotype and genetic background on growth, reproduction and defense in Biomphalaria glabrata.

Resistance of the snail Biomphalaria glabrata to the trematode Schistosoma mansoni is correlated with allelic variation at copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (sod1). We tested whether there is a fitness cost associated with carrying the most resistant allele in three outbred laboratory populations of snails. These three populations were derived from the same base population, but differed in average resistance.

Host susceptibility is altered by light intensity after exposure to parasites.

Translating research advances to natural systems using experimental laboratory studies is often difficult because of the variability between the natural environment and experimental conditions. Because environmental conditions have a large effect on an organism's physiology, responses to stressors like nutrient limitation, temperature, oxygen deprivation, predation, and parasite/pathogen infection are likely to be context dependent. Therefore, it is essential to examine the impact the study environment has on the experimental outcome.

An entomopathogenic Caenorhabditis briggsae.

Caenorhabditis elegans is a premier model organism upon which considerable knowledge of basic cell and developmental biology has been built. Yet, as is true for many traditional model systems, we have limited knowledge of the ecological context in which these systems evolved, severely limiting our understanding of gene function. A better grasp of the ecology of model systems would help us immensely in understanding the functionality of genes and evolution of genomes in an environmental context.

Tryptophan scanning of D1S6 and D4S6 C-termini in voltage-gated sodium channels.

Recent reports suggest that four S6 C-termini may jointly close the voltage-gated cation channel at the cytoplasmic side, probably as an inverted teepee structure. In this study we substituted individually a total of 18 residues at D1S6 and D4S6 C-terminal ends of the rNav1.4 Na(+) channel alpha-subunit with tryptophan (W) and examined their corresponding gating properties when expressed in Hek293t cells along with beta1 subunit.