Capstone Learning Goals

Developmental Biology is a “capstone” course in MCDB (along with Immunology and Molecular Neurobiology). The list of goals below is meant to encapsulate what you should be able to do once you have finished all the required courses for the MCDB major, not necessarily a list of exactly what you will learn in this course. For course-specific learning goals, please see the learning goals presented at the beginning of each class.

General Goals

1. Integrate and apply concepts from previous physics, chemistry, and MCDB core courses to a new, complex system.

2. Distinguish between and justify the use of different possible experimental approaches and predict possible outcomes of such experiments.

3. Interpret and draw conclusions from graphical and pictorial data.

4. Evaluate conclusions from historic and current literature.

5. Convey the fundamental concepts of molecular, cell and developmental biology to others.

Content Goals

Genetics and Gene expression

6. Predict how different kinds of mutations in a gene can lead to particular phenotypes based on the known function of the gene.

7. Interpret data from experiments that demonstrate the regulation of mRNA expression and protein production.

8. Propose how different combinations involving the same transcription factors might result in different patterns of gene expression in different cell types.

9. Distinguish between environmental, genetic, and epigenetic effects on gene expression.

Roles of signaling and cytoplasmic determinants

10. Predict ways in which the binding of an extracellular ligand to a cell surface receptor could affect the expression of a particular gene in the nucleus of that cell.

11. Predict ways in which activation of the same signaling pathway might result in different downstream effects in different cell types.

12. Compare the different mechanisms by which two cells derived, from a common precursor, could take on entirely different fates.

13. Compare mechanisms by which environmental factors influence plasticity at the cellular level.

Evolution

14. Provide examples of structures or mechanisms that have been conserved across species, giving examples of the genes used, and justifying how such genes would be highly conserved.

15. Compare and contrast the processes that make it possible for evolution to produce both variation and diversity within a population and over time.

16. Defend the view that evolution proceeds as the result of random mutations.