PHYSIOLOGY 468b
Cellular and
Molecular Neurobiology
This course will be offered in Winter 2007. There will be an enrolment
limit of 50 students.
This is an advanced course in regulation of cellular communication.
Topics will cover physiological mechanisms involved in activation and
regulation of glutamatergic and GABAergic synapses, synaptic plasticity, and
signal transduction pathways of G-protein coupled receptors. While these
classes of receptors and signaling pathways are common to many cell types and
regulate a wide-range of physiological processes, specific examples relevant to
neuron function will be used as appropriate.
The course is team taught, with three professors, and involves student presentation and discussion of research
articles from the scientific literature. Evaluation of student performance will
include a midterm test (40%), marks for presentation (20%), and a final
examination (40%). Students will be
paired randomly and assigned to present on a particular date. The midterm test
and final examination will consist of essay and short-answer style questions.
Other than lectures given by the instructors, students are expected to know the
main results of the papers presented. Lecture materials will be posted on
WebCT, which is only accessible to registered students.
Papers to be used for students’ presentations will be distributed at the
class prior to presentation (i.e., at least one week before). Presentations
should be 20 minutes in duration, during which time the objectives and
background of the research, relevant experimental methodology and results, as
well as summary of observations and conclusions are to be described. Particular
attention should focus on the physiological mechanisms studied. Discussion of
the content of each paper (involving the student presenter) will last for 5-0
minutes following each paper. After each presentation, the student(s) is/are
required to submit a summary of the talk, to be posted on the web site. The
summary should contain the hypothesis, objectives, brief methods and main
results of the paper. Students who did not submit a summary within 4 days of
the presentation will lose marks (maximum 5%). Students are required to sign up
for paper presentations during the first two weeks of class. Either power point or transparency overheads
may be used for presentation. There
will be no advantage of using power point or overheads.
Course Manager: Dr. L. Stan Leung MSB236; 850-2400
Email: sleung@uwo.ca
Instructors: Dr. Donglin Bai DSB
Addition Rm 00073; 850-2569 Email:donglin.bai@fmd.uwo.ca