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The study of the auditory and vestibular systems is crucial for understanding inner ear medical conditions such as deafness and Ménière’s Disease. The Biology of the Inner Ear Course (BIE) course provides a focused and intense approach that typifies other challenging and highly successful MBL courses to the specific needs of auditory and vestibular research. This three-week multi-disciplinary course provides instruction and hands-on laboratory training in cutting-edge techniques and many specialized methods that can present sizable barriers for individuals who wish to enter into investigations of the inner ear, including the dissection of inner ear sensory organs. The students are introduced to the fundamentals of inner ear research through lectures, research seminars, roundtable discussions, and informal interactions when students and instructors work side-by-side in the laboratory. The course fosters the development of the students as investigators working in the inner ear, emphasizing not just what is known, but also the opportunities for important discoveries, innovative new approaches, and the translation of those discoveries into meaningful improvements in our understanding of the inner ear. The course is designed to accommodate a relatively small number of students and is suitable for individuals with backgrounds in the biological, chemical, and physical/computational sciences.
In the laboratory, students use state-of-the-art equipment to learn microdissection procedures for harvesting inner ear organs from a variety of species; methods for culturing inner ear organs in vitro; use of fluorescent and immune probes for light and electron microscopy; modern methods of hair-cell electrophysiology; adenoviral infection, biolistic transfection, and electroporation for introducing genes into hair cells; the use of zebrafish and transgenic mice for investigations of hair cells; the generation of inner-ear stems cells; bioinformatic analysis of gene expression; and other approaches. During laboratory sessions the students benefit from one-on-one instruction from faculty members who are all leaders in the auditory and vestibular fields. The goal of this course, however, is not merely to introduce students to the technical aspects of working in the inner ear, but also to instill in them the important questions of the field and the challenges we are faced in addressing these questions.
Over 30 of the top inner-ear scientists from the United States and abroad participate in teaching the BIE course. This unique opportunity offers students the chance to interact with, learn from, and form connections with some of the most highly regarded scientists in the field.
2007 Faculty
Paul Adler, University of Virginia
Jonathan Ashmore, University College London
James Bartles, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
John Brigande, Oregon Health and Science University
David Corey, Harvard Medical School
Peter Dallos, Northwestern University
David Dickman, Washington University
Donna Fekete, Purdue University
Andrew Forge, University College London
Paul Fuchs, Johns Hopkins University
Gwenaelle Geleoc, University of Virginia
Lisa Goodrich, Harvard Medical School
Robert Grainger, University of Virginia
Stefan Heller, Stanford University
Steven Highstein, Washington University
Gay Holstein, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
A.J. (Jim) Hudspeth, Rockefeller University
Frank Julicher, MPI for the Physics of Complex Systems
Matthew Kelley, National Institutes of Health
Charles Liberman, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Micheal Lovett, Washington University
Xiaowei Lu, University of Virginia
Lloyd Minor, Johns Hopkins University
Cynthia Morton, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
David Raible, University of Washington
Guy Richardson, University of Sussex
Robert Shannon, House Ear Institute
Karen Steel, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Melissa Vollrath, Harvard Medical School
Mark Warchol, Washington University
Jian Zuo, St. Jude Children’s Hospital
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