Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are synthetic persistent organic compounds that are known to be carcinogenic to humans. Changes in telomerase activity and telomere length are hallmarks of aging and carcinogenesis. Retention of telomerase activity and long telomeres are key characteristics of stem cells and progenitor cells. I hypothesize that PCBs modulate telomerase activity and telomeres of hematopoietic stem cells and progenitor cells via interference of gene regulation and potentially disrupt cell differentiation. To investigate this possibility, I used progenitor-like cells, human promyelocytic leukemia cells (HL-60), and stem cells from rat bone marrow. I show that PCB126 and PCB153 display toxic effects on telomerase activity, telomere length and their related gene expression in progenitor-like HL-60 cells, but they did not exert much effect on differentiation. Further, an in vivo/in vitro study using rat bone marrow cells shows that PCB126-induced hematotoxicity, evidenced by reduction in telomerase activity and TERT gene expression, an increase of the differentiation and a change in the differentiation direction towards granulocytes, which indicate an effect on stem cell function. I also show that the most potent dioxin-like congener, PCB126, regulates hTERT gene expression by activation of the AhR pathway. Both AhR and ARNT work together as a repressor of hTERT transcription. This research improves our understanding of mechanisms of PCB126 and PCB153 toxicity on hematopoietic stem cells and progenitor cells, which will ultimately have significant implications for human health.

This professional development project seeks to enable elementary teachers to reach for excellence in elementary school science through Inquiry-, Standards-, Problem- and Technology-based (ISPT-based) learning environments. The project provided a total of 102 hours of ISPT-based PD by sponsoring five Saturday workshops, one summer institute and three school visits. It intended to build up two instructional infrastructures under the ETSU Northeast TN Innovation STEM Hub: (1) A Bank of Human Resource: creating a cadre of skillful science lead teachers; (2) A Virtual Instructional Network: building up a web-based instructional resource network. Various summative and formative assessment instruments were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the project, including: Teachers’ Content/Pedagogy Surveys, Classroom Observations, Content Assessments, Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) Reports and Students’ TCAP Achievement Tests. Overall, this program demonstrated statistically significant growth in all measured areas, including teacher quality, teacher opinions, preparedness, content knowledge as well as teachers’ TVASS reports and students’ TCAP results.

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Drawing on three cases from a larger (N=169) longitudinal study of student writing development, this article shows how STEM students “rewrote” disciplines to suit their writerly purposes as they moved through their undergraduate years. Students made it clear that the institutional dimensions of disciplines, visible in administrative units or departments that control resources and records, remained visible in their mental landscapes, but they had a much more flexible view of the epistemological dimensions of disciplines. Rather than entering a field as novices aiming to emulate the writing of its experts, they drew on the intellectual resources of multiple disciplines in order to carry out their own projects. The goals and choices of these students suggest that the term new disciplinarity has implications for the ways WID is conceptualized. As theorized by Markovitch and Shinn (2011, 2012), new disciplinarity posits elasticity as a central feature of disciplines, calls the spaces between disciplines borderlands, and affirms the dynamic nature of projects and borderlands with the term temporality. As such, new disciplinarity offers terms and a theoretical framework that conceptualize the intellectual negotiations of students.

INTRODUCTION: Damage to the musculoskeletal system through disease, injury, or ageing can have long-lasting, and detrimental effects on one’s overall well-being. By understanding the processes by which the different tissues of the musculoskeletal system function and communicate, we can apply it to a variety of medical interventions that will benefit the patient population. These include reducing the prevalence of injury-inducing ectopic bone formation in muscle and slowing the degeneration of muscle and bone tissue associated with aging. A major focus is the relationship between muscle and bone tissue, specifically the stem cell populations found in each tissue type. Two genes that are thought to mark stem cell populations associated with muscle and bone tissue are Pax7 and Prx1, respectively. OBJECTIVES: Establish the capability and define optimal conditions to culture primary stem cells isolated from the muscle tissue of the reporter animals that fluorescently tag the Pax7 and Prx1 cell populations. Manipulate culture medium conditions to characterize the differentiation potential for multiple lineages, osteogenic, adipogenic, and myogenic. Lastly, assess whether there is more adipogenic cell differentiation in older animal cell cultures. METHODS: The tamoxifen inducible Pax7^tm1(cre/ER2)Gaka/J and Prx1^CreER-GFP were both crossed with B6.Cg-Gt(ROSA)26sor<tm14(CAG-tdTomato)Hze>/J to create the tamoxifen inducible Pax7/Ai14 and Prx1/Ai14 reporter mice. These animals were then crossed to the B6,129S7-Rag1^tm1Mom/J , creating the Pax7/Ai14/Rag and Prx1/Ai14/Rag reporter mice strains. This transgenic mouse model made it possible to fluorescently identify the Pax7 and Prx1 population of cells isolated from the muscle tissue and characterize the differentiation potential to different cell lineages in vitro. Cells were harvested from both male and female mice that received two tamoxifen injections. Cells were then cultured in various culture media conditions. Determination of specific cell densities, culture conditions, and differentiation time points were determined by manipulating these variables, and assessing the levels of proliferation and differentiation. Multiple assays were run in order to quantify and identify the different cell lineages that were grown in culture under different culture conditions. RESULTS: Cells grown on gelatin coated dishes at densities of 2.2x10^4 to 2.2x10^5 showed optimal performance in proliferation and differentiation. Cells grown in Growth Media containing Chick Embryo Extract (GM) and without (GM-) produced myogenic and adipogenic cell types that were positive for Prx1 expression. Prx1 positive cells grown in the Osteo-Inductive Media (GMOI) produced osteogenic cell types validated through tetracycline uptake. Pax7 expression was low in all culture media conditions. Finally, adipogenic cells were present in both younger and older animals. The adipogenic cells for both populations showed positive Prx1 expression. Younger animals showed a larger relative expression of Plin1 in qRT-PCR analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Although Prx1 is thought to be associated with bone tissue, Prx1 positive cells are located within the muscle and able to be cultured. This muscle derived Prx1 cell population is able to differentiate toward the myogenic, adipogenic, and osteogenic cell lineages. By altering the specific components of culture conditions such as extracellular matrices, seeding density, and media constituents, it is possible to force a particular lineage differentiation for Pax7 and Prx1 muscle derived stem cells. Further studies are needed to elucidate the differentiation potential of Prx1 cells isolated from animals of various ages. Additional in vivo studies are needed to understand the mechanisms surrounding the Prx1 and Pax7 population of cells with their roles in healing and regeneration in response to degeneration and trauma.

Successful bone marrow (BM) transplantation requires the homing of the transplanted hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) to their bone marrow niche, where they undergo differentiation to form mature cells that are eventually released into the peripheral blood. However, the survival rate of patients receiving BM transplants is poor since many of the transplanted HSPCs do not make it to their BM niches in the recipient’s body. Since the availability of HSPCs from traditional sources is limited, transplanting more number of HSPCs is not a solution to this problem. This study aims to characterize the adhesion molecules mediating cell migration in order to better understand the adhesion mechanisms of HSCs with the bone marrow endothelium. This will aid in developing future tools to improve the clinical transplantation of HSPCs. This study also aims to understand the factors that influence HSPC proliferation in the bone marrow niche. E-selectin plays an important role in the process of homing; however, its ligands on HSPCs are not well characterized. We used western blotting and immunoprecipitation to show that endomucin is expressed on HSPCs and plays a role in the binding of HSPCs to E-selectin. We also studied the effect of recombinant E-selectin on the expression of a newly characterized E-selectin ligand in our lab, CD34, in HSPCs. This will provide us insight into novel roles for endomucin and E-selectin and help us to understand the factors influencing HSPC migration to BM endothelium.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第21992号 / 医博第4506号 / 新制||医||1037(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 川口 義弥, 教授 坂井 義治, 教授 濵﨑 洋子 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM