9451080 Beatty This proposal seeks funds to enrich the undergraduate neuroscience laboratory experience at UCLA by extending current exercises and experiments into the domain of the neuron and the genome. Two new neuroscience laboratories -the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Laboratory and the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory -will benefit from the grant. The requested instrumentation will give students experience in intracellular microelectrode recording from cultured Aplysia neurons, the source of much basic knowledge of neuronal function; patch-clamp recording from PC-12 and N1E1-15 cells studying ion channels and receptors; and restriction analysis of DNA and DNA sequence analysis for identifying a series of clones that are expressed primarily in the brain. Patch-clamp and molecular biological methods will bc used together to study the properties of expressed receptors, channels, pumps, and other important membrane proteins in the Xenopus oocyte system. All these exercises are at the forefront of contemporary neuroscience and technically are well within the grasp of university undergraduates. Both the departmental and the interdisciplinary neuroscience laboratories are team taught, with each faculty member teaching a module in his or her own area of expertise. Up to date documentation and instructional material for all laboratory modules will be made available to all colleges and universities over Internet.
