Inquiry Unit (u13649.xml)

Cystic Fibrosis

Anuradha Murphy (a-datta@bigfoot.com) (ready to use)

ASK Partner Projects

GK-12 Teaching Fellowships

Subject Areas

Education, Educational Technology, Science

Grade Levels

10, 11, 12, Undergraduate

Unit Keywords

Respiration, cystic fibrosis, CFTR, oakland, school, science

Rationale of the Unit

In this unit we will study Cystic Fibrosis, a disease associated primarily with the respiratory system. We will use the Biology Workbench and tools available on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website to study the protein that causes this genetic disorder.


	INVESTIGATE	Go to Top

Background and Resources

BACKGROUND -- brief overview

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an inherited genetic disorder that affects certain epithelial cells in the body. CF patients usually die of respiratory failure due to bacterial infections developing in obstructed airways. In this unit we will explore the molecular basis for this disease. Specifically, we will obtain protein sequences of the CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane receptor) protein in the normal (wild type) and CF-mutated forms, align and compare the sequences to identify the CF-mutation, view the structure of the CFTR protein, and examine the location of the CF-mutation. We will also discuss the symptoms and proposed treatments of the disease.

READINGS --

A brief slideshow on cystic fibrosis can be viewed here:
http://www.healthcentral.com/library/April_03/flash_content/hcplay.asp?id=110

WEB SITES -- sites for exploration and interaction

Read up on the cause and symptoms of cystic fibrosis at these web sites:

http://www.healthcentral.com/library/librarycontent.cfm?id=222

http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=2CEBF76F-D36A-4D15-B937BFF91AB51438

http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/CVMHighLight?file=/mrkshared/mmanual_home2/sec04/ch053/ch053a.jsp%3Fregion%3Dmerckcom&word=cystic&word=fibrosis&domain=www.merck.com#hl_anchor

http://www.cff.org/

RESOURCES AND SUPPLEMENT MATERIALS

Work through a cystic fibrosis tutorial at:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorials/cysticfibrosis/id289102.html

Tools used in this unit are available at:

The Biology Student Workbench:
http://peptide.ncsa.uiuc.edu/

National Center for Biotechnology Information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

The ExPASy Molecular Biology Server: http://kr.expasy.org/

Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (to explore genetic diseases): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=OMIM

Protein structure viewer, Cn3D: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/CN3D/cn3dinstall.shtml

Uploaded Files:
cysticfibrosis.ppt

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