Here’s a thought for our times: “The best part of migrating a course online is making the trailer.”

The source of that statement is Andrew Kennedy, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. He made the comment on Twitter on March 20, as he posted a trailer — the cinematic variety, not the kind you tow — for his course “Mechanisms of Memory.”

Like many of his �ֲ���ý colleagues and peers at other schools, Kennedy has been scrambling to move his courses and his interactions with students online as the COVID-19 outbreak has sent students home.

The best part of migrating a course online is making the trailer

— Andrew J Kennedy (@Prof_AJKennedy)

“I’ve never really made a video for class, and I’ve certainly never exclusively administered a course remotely,”  says Kennedy.

“It’s one thing to design a class to be a certain way, giving deep thought into how the students might enjoy being engaged with the material and with one another. But it’s another thing entirely to abruptly shift that, and everyone participating in it, into this new virtual space.

“I think I made it to demonstrate to the students and to myself that we can’t just keep doing what we did before.” It’s a make-the-best-of-this attitude that reflects �ֲ���ý’ upbeat determination to keep the pedagogical momentum going.

Kennedy’s trailer, named for the course, racks up the laughs as the professor makes fun of his inexperience and discomfort with remote teaching. Inspired by Kennedy to make her own trailer, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene took the humor a step further.

Titled The Classroom Is Not Enough, her promo for the course “Neuroethics” takes on the cinematic James Bond aesthetic (albeit substituting coffee for the British spy’s martinis).

“Don’t we need a chuckle right now?” says Greene. “In all seriousness, I strongly believe in humor to rebuild the community in my class and to put students in a positive mindset moving forward.” A researcher who studies how the brain makes sense of what we see, Greene is the principal investigator of a major project to create a vast Visual Experience Database.��

Video by Michelle Greene.

https://youtu.be/REoCADGZXy0  

Kennedy agrees. “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my students,” he says. “The rest of the semester is going to be hard on everyone, and therefore compassion, community, and continued intellectual engagement have to be at the center of whatever we do going forward.

“But with all that is wrong and omnipresent in our lives right now, I also desperately wanted to laugh and make fun of myself, and I thought the students might need that, too.”

Kennedy’s research includes important achievements in potential therapies for the autism-spectrum disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome and the recent synthesis of a new molecule, Bobcat339, that has the potential to govern the function of genes related to memory loss and genes that aid and abet the spread of cancer.

Along with Kennedy and Greene, a third �ֲ���ý person has turned to the trailer format to advance her online teaching. Amy Bass ’92, author and professor of sports studies at Manhattanville College, did something similar, she says, to get her students “psyched for our migration to distance learning amidst the chaos that is COVID-19.”

I made a little something for my studies students — we go online tomorrow, and we are ready for this adventure.

— Amy Bass (@bassab1)

Both �ֲ���ý professors used basic technology that was close at hand to film the pieces — a laptop for Kennedy, who shot the piece entirely in his Dana Chemistry Hall office, and a smartphone for Greene, who combined new footage with sourced clips from her course. Both used iMovie to assemble the trailers.

Making the trailer “was a blast. It was the first time I laughed in a week,” Kennedy says, adding that after he posted it “a bunch of former students reached out to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.”

“My students have enjoyed it,” says Greene. “They’ve especially latched on to my cat Tesla being the new class TA. On our Slack discussion channel, they have even created an emoji of him.”

Two �ֲ���ý College scientists have received nearly $373,000 from the National Institutes of Health for first-of-its-kind research into the genetic functioning of bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

The project draws on new capabilities in high-resolution microscopy that make it possible to observe spatial arrangements of RNA in Borrelia burgdorferi, one of four Borrelia species that cause Lyme disease. This study of variations in RNA location and shape could eventually suggest new medical responses to Lyme, which strikes up to 300,000 people in the U.S. annually.

Receiving the $372,639 grant for the two-year project are physicist Travis Gould, an expert in the field of fluorescence nanoscopy, and biochemist Paula Schlax, who researches gene expression in spiral-shaped bacteria, also known as spirochetes, such as Lyme bacteria.

Biochemist Paula Schlax and physicist Travis Gould pose with Gould’s STED super-resolution microscope in Carnegie Science Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“RNA is an intermediate in the process of cells making proteins,” says Schlax, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at �ֲ���ý. “We’re trying to understand generally how production of proteins gets turned on and off when the bacteria move from ticks to mammals and from mammals back to ticks” — changes in the bacteria’s environment that change the shape and location of RNA.

“We know from other bacteria that RNA’s location inside the cell seems to affect how long that RNA lasts — whether it’s near the edges of the cell, or the ends of the cell, or spread out evenly inside. Our hypothesis is that how fast RNA gets broken down, or doesn’t get broken down, probably helps the cell decide which proteins to make when conditions change, such as when the bacteria moves from the tick to a mammal or vice versa.”

Variations in protein production could cause variations in the bacteria’s disease-causing capability. “The more we understand that process,” Schlax says, “the easier it is to think about new targets for drugs and new therapeutics.”

Until quite recently, the physical limitations of microscope technology curtailed its usefulness in testing such a hypothesis. The bacteria have a characteristic shape, says Gould: very skinny in relation to length. The length is typically around 20 microns, or millionths of a meter, but the bacteria’s internal diameter is vastly smaller, at about 200 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. (A piece of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.)

“That 200 nanometers is, in the best-case scenario, at the limit of a conventional microscope’s resolution,” Gould says. “So a conventional microscope can’t answer these questions about where RNA is within that 200-nanometer cylinder.”

But Gould, an associate professor of physics, is an innovator in imaging technologies that use lasers, fluorescing molecules, and other means to attain much higher resolution. For the NIH-funded research, he has adapted an existing �ֲ���ý microscope that he built and that uses a process called stimulated emission depletion, or STED, to capture images of the B. burgdorferi RNA.

Going from older microscopy technologies to Gould’s newly updated STED “is like putting on glasses for the first time.”

Specifically, he added another laser to the instrument that expands its imaging capability from two to three dimensions. Going from older technologies to this latest iteration, says Schlax, “is like putting on glasses for the first time.”

Complementary to the STED technology, the researchers and their students will use a technique called fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) that deploys fluorescent probes to specific parts of the “transcripts” that the microbe’s DNA imparts to its RNA.

The research will be the first to identify patterns of transcript localization within B. burgdorferi, and, notably, the first research to use STED microscopy for this sort of localization within any spirochete.

This is significant given the range and impact of diseases caused by such bacteria, including syphilis, yaws, periodontal disease, and leptospirosis, whose effects include kidney failure.

Joining Schlax and Gould in the project are �ֲ���ý students and research associate Anna Bowsher, whose position is funded by the NIH grant. The work entails growing B. burgdorferi microbes in the lab, affixing individual cells to slides, and introducing DNA molecules, complete with fluorescent tags, that are tailored to activate a specific RNA response.

Then the slides will be examined with Gould’s STED microscope, and the results compiled into a spatial-distribution analysis of different types of RNAs. The team hopes that they will have results to report by summer 2020.

The project will involve both thesis students advised by Gould and Schlax and students doing summer research. “These kinds of projects really are great for students to see how science is done,” says Schlax, “and hopefully get their names on some papers and keep them interested in science.”

With the use of fluorescing molecules now standard practice in high-resolution microscopy, STED imaging achieves enhanced resolution through a technique of selectively switching off such molecules. STED is one of a number of so-called super-resolution techniques developed to bypass the diffraction limit, a limit on the resolution of conventional microscopy imposed by the length of light waves.

Gould estimates that all told, there are likely two dozen or so labs equipped with commercially available STED microscopes, and another handful that use custom-built instruments like his.

Rakiya Mohamed ’18 of Auburn, Maine, recounts how she found purpose in her journey at �ֲ���ý by discovering how she was going to view herself.

“Who am I? I am a scientist, but I am also a scholar in African American studies,” says Mohamed, an immigrant from Ethiopia who has been a prominent �ֲ���ý voice for racial justice.

“What is the point of getting this education if you’re not going to go out there and do something with it — do something that’s bigger than you?”

As a boy, Cormac Walsh ’17 of Biddeford pursued powerlifting to build his body and self-esteem.

An overweight and somewhat unhappy boy, “I had the choice of remaining that way, or make myself happier,” he says.

Video story by Josh Kuckens

He chose the latter, lost 100 pounds by the start of high school, and began to lift. And lift. And lift, setting youth powerlifting records in Maine and New Hampshire in high school.

Today, he’s an accomplished adult lifter who finished third in his weight class at the Maine Powerlifing Championships last fall. He can dead lift 570 pounds. (Equivalent to 27 bobcats, or one female polar bear, or half a white mule.)

He’s also a �ֲ���ý biochemistry major.

“It’s about pushing to get better.”

Whether improving his mental or physical well-being, whether building mind or muscle, Walsh’s goal is “not about getting stronger. It’s about pushing to get better.”

Each lift bring him to the razor’s edge both mentally and physically.�� First, he has “to conquer myself, and then the bar. And lift it.”

Lifting is intensely individual, yet Walsh found a way to use his sport to build a bit of �ֲ���ý community by starting a �ֲ���ý powerlifting team.

Teammate Nicholas O’Brien, a �ֲ���ý staff member, says powerlifting has given him a deeper insight into one of life’s great challenges: how to manage the psychic tussle between strength and vulnerability.

“It’s frightening, in the sense that you are trying to lift weights that you are barely able to lift,” O’Brien says. “You have this irony of being strong and lifting a lot of weight but also being really vulnerable, [and] there’s a pretty high chance of failure. During a competition, it’s hour after hour of being confronted with this reality.”

Dixon’s talk, the second in a series to celebrate the establishment of a new �ֲ���ý major in biological chemistry, will include a discussion of the biochemistry of cell cycling and the role of biological chemistry research in society.

President-elect of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dixon has recieved numerous awards and research grants, including substantial support from the National Institutes of Health , Parke-Davis and Walther Cancer Institute. The Minor J. Coon Professor and chair of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan, Dixon was named Michigan Scientist of the Year in 1994.

Dixon serves as a consultant for Monsanto Chemical Company in St. Louis, Mitotix Incorporated in Cambridge, Mass., and Dendritech Inc. in Midland, Mich. The executive editor of “Analytical Biochemistry” and a member of the editorial boards for “American Journal of Physiology,” “Endocrinology” and “Biochemistry,” his current research focuses on the structure function of protein tyrosine phosphatases and on pancreatic hormones.

The author of close to 200 scientific papers and a contributor to scores of books, Dixon received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Ph.D from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego.

Before moving to the University of Michigan in 1991, Dixon taught for 18 years at Purdue University where he was the Harvey W. Wiley Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry from 1986-91. He served as a faculty member of the Indiana University School of Medicine from 1976-91.

The seminar series is co-sponsored by the President’s Office and the Biological Chemistry Program Committee at �ֲ���ý.