Interdisciplinary – Page 2 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Continuous evaluation of instruction

How teachers respond to the multiple events going on as they teach was studied using first-person mobile eye-tracking recordings. By learning more about this topic learning can be improved for young children, especially when classes are moved online. During this project, 30 videos of classroom lessons including a mobile eye tracking record from the teacher were coded Teachers often overlook a wide range of “distractions.” Separate coding of distractions shows that children engaged in a range of misbehavior, and were distracted by classmates’ activity. Complicating the situation for teachers is the fact that their responses to distractions often cause further class interruption. Understanding the complex cognition teachers engage in (while also teaching) will help us to understand the nature of expertise in classroom management and teaching..

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Main Street Transformation Project

Vanguard Community Development services the North End of Detroit in three major areas: economic development, housing development, and community engagement and planning. To assist in economic development within the North End community, Vanguard applied for a Main Street Designation. Vanguard successfully received the designation from Michigan Economic Development Corporation in March 2020. This designation provides technical support to businesses within the North End community. Along with the technical support, there is also a strategic transformation plan which will be implemented over the next five years. The outreach to the community regarding this strategic planning process began in January 2021. We began contacting community and municipal stakeholders to seek input to create the vision for the plan. These stakeholders attended meetings hosted by Michigan and National Main Street, in which Vanguard is the host organization for the program. Through constant communication and engagement, we formed relationships with the community members and municipal entities in order to engage their involvement in the planning process.

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Revitalizing Northeast Detroit through data base research

Northeastern Detroit has long been a historical focal point in Michigan. It has a rich history that stretches back over a century, however, for much of its history it’s been utilized in an industrial manner. While this industry has brought its benefits to the area, these were not without consequences. These consequences are more apparent now than ever with the struggles of truck traffic, environmental concerns, and industrial encroachment. The goal of our research was to tackle some of these concerns and promote the true needs of the diverse community. Whether through land use hearings or research on the property and zoning use of an area, our community engaged research covered all arrays of public policy advocacy.

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Revitalizing Northeast Detroit through data base research

Northeastern Detroit has long been a historical focal point in Michigan. It has a rich history that stretches back over a century, however, for much of its history it’s been utilized in an industrial manner. While this industry has brought its benefits to the area, these were not without consequences. These consequences are more apparent now than ever with the struggles of truck traffic, environmental concerns, and industrial encroachment. The goal of our research was to tackle some of these concerns and promote the true needs of the diverse community. Whether through land use hearings or research on the property and zoning use of an area, our community engaged research covered all arrays of public policy advocacy.

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Global Workers’ Rights

The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.

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Global Workers’ Rights

The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.

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Identifying neuronal components necessary for cool temperature sensing

Temperature sensing is necessary for homeostatic regulation, probing the environment for pleasant or aversive cues, and must be reliable across a broad range of temperatures. Under normal conditions, cool temperatures are not painful. However, patients suffering from chronic pain perceive normally innocuous cool temperatures as an unbearably painful sensation known as cold allodynia. How innocuous cool temperatures are signaled in the spinal cord has not been well studied. This study aims to uncover the basic neuronal components necessary for cool temperature transmission in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. To accomplish this, an intersectional genetic strategy was implemented to ablate several different cell-type markers in the dorsal horn, then tested for temperature sensing impairments. Interestingly, Calbindin 1 (Calb1) neurons, which are mostly local interneurons, were necessary for the detection of cool but not cold stimuli. Calb1 is a heterogeneous population. Using In Situ Hybridization and immunohistochemistry, the Calb1 population was characterized based on markers for excitatory/inhibitory neurons, laminae layer, and somatosensory neurons for pain and itch. By understanding these different subpopulations, the role Calbindin 1 neurons play in transmitting cool and cold sensations can be further investigated. This study provides insight into the neural basis of cool temperature transmission in the spinal cord, which may lead to treatments for patients suffering from cold allodynia.

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Characterization of TRPM8-expressing sensory neurons

The cation channel TRPM8 has been implicated in cold detection, yet no identification of distinct subpopulations of TRPM8-expressing sensory neurons responsible for detecting different levels of cold stimuli (noxious vs. innocuous) has been made. The current study takes advantage of Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD), light-sensitive channelrhodopsin-2 ion channels (ChR2), thermal behavioral assays, immunostaining, and RNAscope technology to investigate the role of different subpopulations of TRPM8 sensory neurons in dorsal root ganglia of mice. First, we want to study the function of TRPM8 sensory neurons in vivo by expressing an inhibitory Gi DREADD selectively in TRPM8 sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of mice. Upon injection of the DREADD agonist clozapine-N-oxide (CNO), the DREADD-expressing TRPM8 sensory neurons could be selectively inhibited to infer neuronal function following cold-plate behavioral assays. Sensory neurons in the DRG can be broadly divided into three groups based on cell body diameter: small, medium and large. From our RNAscope results, “small” TRPM8 neurons expressed significantly higher levels of the trpm8 gene than “medium to large” TRPM8 neurons, potentially providing a basis for differentiation between the two subpopulations. Thermal-related behavioral experiments are still ongoing. We hypothesize that the two subpopulations of TRPM8 sensory neurons serve distinct functions in sensing cold stimuli of different intensities.

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Exploring the CRISPR-Cas9 System through Human EMX1 Gene Deletions

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is a technology used to edit genomes at very high precision. It enables precise editing of genomic loci with a RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease that can cleave target DNA that is complementary to a guide RNA (gRNA). Then, the CRISPR-Cas9 system can be used to achieve various goals such as treating inherited diseases (e.g., cystic fibrosis). The objective is to test the specificity and function of the CRISPR-Cas9 system in deleting a targeted sequence in mammalian cells. Mammalian 293AD cells were first transfected with the Cas9-expressing plasmid and human EMX1 ()-specific 3.1+4.1 gRNA sequences. 72 hours after transfection, the DNA was extracted and purified from the cells. The hEMX1 modified region was amplified using a set of primers in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The PCR products were run in a 2% agarose gel for gel electrophoresis where the sizes of the DNA fragments were compared to a marker. Results from gel electrophoresis showed that the Cas9 system was successfully able to target the hEMX1 gene when 3.1+4.1 gRNA was present. However, pNTAP posi-tag, a plasmid without the hEMX1 sequence, also showed unexpected cuts which lead to DNA fragments of various sizes. The results show that the CRISPR-Cas9 system was propitious in targeting the hEMX1 DNA sequence. The unexpected cuts made in pNTAP posi-tag will require further experimentation, with one possibility being to extract, purify, and sequence the unanticipated DNA fragments in order to explain the results.

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Single Molecule Dynamics of RNAs in Stress Granules

Stress granules (SGs) are condensates of RNAs and proteins formed in the cytoplasm of the cell when exposed to acute stress. Though recent studies have concluded that SGs appear to play an important role in tumor progression, gene expression, and neurodegeneration, the exact function of SGs is not completely understood. Furthermore, the dynamics of the mRNAs near the surface of the SGs is an area of active research and may provide important clues about the granules’ function, for example, how they can govern the exchange of materials in the cell. To study the dynamics of the mRNAs near the granules’ boundaries, we developed an algorithm which delineates the boundaries in highly inclined and laminated optical sheet (HILO) microscopy images. The simple but fast and robust algorithm we developed to be used with ImageJ is capable of finding the SGs’ boundaries with diffraction limited accuracy and works even on highly inhomogeneous cell images and for granules of arbitrary shape, size, and internal structure, which is an advancement compared to existing methods. After identifying the mRNA molecules in the same field of view using single molecule microscopy, we will use our approach to compare the mRNAs’ locations and SGs’ boundaries over time to study the dynamics of mRNAs on the SG surface. We are now applying this algorithm to study the dynamics of the mRNAs in the cell in order to better understand the interaction of mRNAs with SGs.

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