14 The ASCB
Newsletter, Vol 24, No
9 WWW.CELL
BIOLOGY EDUCATION The
ASCB Education Committee calls attention each month to Web sites of educational
interest to the cell biology community.
The Committee does not endorse nor guarantee the accuracy of the
information at any of the listed sites. If you wish to comment on the selections or suggest
future inclusions, please send a message to
rblyston@trinity.edu. 1.
Immunoanimations http://www.blink.uk.com/immunoanimations/
This site is essentially a commercial advertisement for a
London graphics house called Blink Studio. Blink has done the
graphics for several well-known textbooks
such as Wolpert’s Principles of
Development. The URL represents
animations developed for Immunobiology, 5th edition by
Janeway, Travers, Walport and Shlomchick, published by Garland Press. (This review does not represent an
endorsement of the book or Web site; however, the animations
are too good to overlook.) In order to view the
animations, your browser will need Flash V, available for free from
Macromedia. The Blink site has a link to a
Flash download site. The page opens with
three controlling areas: a subject index, an icon descriptor, and an
animation viewing box. There are 27
animations distributed among four topics that are titled: antigen recognition,
lymphocyte development, immune response, and responses & disease. Approximately 60 icons have been
developed to represent subjects such as lysosomes, T cells, and
chemokines. The animations based on this common icon set
are from 1 to 3 minutes in length and cover a variety of subjects
including the following: dendritic-cell
migration, MHC class II processing, TRC signaling, complement
system, lymphocyte traffick- ing, and hapten carrier effect. Captions pop up to
describe portions of the animations. A 56K modem would be too slow to
play these animations effectively. As one
would expect, animations developed for a textbook should have high teaching
value. These animations do. Enjoy them
before the site goes away. 2. Below is a collection of URLs dealing with
stem cells. Clearly research based on embryonic stem cells is of considerable
interest. The listed sites have very high
educational value and should help your students place the issues associated with
stem cell research into
context. a) A
Primer on Human Embryonic Stem Cells http://www.metanexus.net/archives/message_fs.asp?listtype=Magazine&ARCHIVEID=3929
Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist from Swarthmore
College, has developed a short and very readable primer on human embryonic stem cells. Students will find this primer to
be quite helpful as they grapple with the topic for the first
time. His primer is posted on Metanexus,
which is an interesting site to explore as it deals with issues concerning
science and religion. b) NIH: News: Stem Cell: Stem Cells;
Scientific Progress and Future Research Directions http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/scireport.htm
This site provides access to an NIH report on stem cells.
It is divided into eleven chapters accompanied by seven extensive
appendices containing a great deal of resource and
reference materials. The entire document can be downloaded as a
20 Mbytes PDF file. The publication is quite timely and
useful. c) NIH:
News: Stem Cell Information http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/index.htm
This page provides links to twenty information sources on
stem cells. There are press notices and video broadcasts included
among the links. A White House fact sheet, a stem
cell primer, and HHS Secretary Thompson’s briefing about federal
funding of stem cell research are
identified. The free Real Player is needed to view and hear Thompson’s briefing.
Students will have access to a broad
overview of this subject as they navigate this site. 3. Panel on Scientific and
Medical Aspects of Human Cloning http://www4.nationalacademies.org/pd/cosepup.nsf/web/human_cloning?OpenDocument
Joining human stem cell research in the public eye is the
possibility of human cloning. The National Academy Board on Life
Sciences had a panel meeting on the topic August 7,
2001. The topics covered by the panel were Overview of
Embryology, Scientific Issues Underlying
Cloning, Reproductive Cloning in Animals, Cloning of Stem Cells, Reproductive
Cloning in Humans, Applicability of Animal
Cloning Data to Human Cloning, Assisted Reproductive Technologies and
Public Policy Issues. Visuals associated
with panel presentations are part of this site. Some excellent teaching material
can be harvested from the copyrighted
material. These sites were checked August
25, 2001. Previous ASCB columns reviewing Educational Websites with the
links to the sites may be found at
www.trinity.edu/rblyston/ASCB/ASCB.html.