PUBLICATION IN SCIENTIFIC REPORTS FROM OUR OXFORD STAN-X PARTNERSHIP
Students and teachers in the Stan-X program published their study, “A LexAop > UAS > QUAS trimeric plasmid to generate inducible and interconvertible Drosophila overexpression transgenes” in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal. This is the fourth original research article published by members of the Stan-X network since 2016. The article can be accessed here.
Students and instructors at the Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, summer 2019 Stan-X course.
Co-authors on this study include undergraduate students Imam Awan, Sichen Liu, Yulia Sudarikova and Ethan Sung – all from the University of Oxford, Gabrielle Asia Bonoko from Maastricht University (Netherlands), and Mar Bustamante-Sequeiros from the Universidad de Sevilla (Spain), along with Stan-X partnering teachers and teaching assistants from the Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford and Stanford University. This study was led by Professors L. Alberto Baena-Lopez (Dunn School and Oriel College) and Seung Kim (Stanford), and is the first from the Stan-X partnership with the Dunn School and supported by the Stanford Bing Overseas Program at Oxford, led by Director Stephanie Solywoda.
Students engaged in ‘Gibson assembly’ DNA cloning.
The study describes several advances in the field of Drosophila genetics, including creation of a genetic tool to generate ‘interconvertable’ fruit fruit fly lines that can flexibly respond to transgenic regulators. Baena-Lopez and his trainees, including co-first author Franz Wendler and co-authors Claire Hill and Alessia Galasso, along with Dr. Sangbin Park (Stanford) generated a ‘modular DNA cloning vector’ that allows single
transgene or combinatorial transgene expression in fruit flies using the budding yeast GAL4 activator, the Neurospora Q activator, or the bacterial LexA activator. In addition, it contains elements that facilitate the termination of such induced gene expression with temporal precision. Together these features are highly valuable to create interconvertible transgenic flies with flexible capability to express any gene of interest.The foundation of this study were developed in a summertime Oxford-based course created by Baena-Lopez, Hill, Galasso, Kim, Park and Kathleen R. Chang, who was a Stanford undergraduate in 2019, and who served as a teaching assistant at Oxford. The discovery-oriented experimental science course (temporarily interrupted in 2020-21 by the global COVID-19 pandemic) eventually led to data and new fruit fly strains described in the Scientific Reports article.
Close instruction of Oxford Stan-X summer course students.
As part of this course, undergraduate students including Chang had the opportunity to work and live at Oxford, housed in the Stanford House on High Street. This course and output highlights ongoing collaborations between Stan-X and university-based instructors and students. Since its inception in 2012, Stan-X has partnered with Stanford University, Oxford, Loyola Marymount College (U.S.) and Harvard Summer School. The ongoing vision is that unscripted science performed and learned through these partnerships will allow students and teachers to generate new, valuable Drosophila resources and phenotypic data for the scientific community, while providing students with a sense of scientific discovery and ownership.
Lawrenceville School instructor Nicole Lantz, who assisted with the inception of this course at Oxford, and visited the Dunn School during the summer of 2019 said, “This was such a joyful experience to watch and participate in; like with our students at Lawrenceville, I saw a tremendously lively engagement by students in real-world science – with all its ups and downs and uncertainty and occasional successes. The challenge of developing a summertime course with a shorter duration but a high-quality experience has helped us develop more flexible curricula. For example, we are now working with Harvard Summer School on a new 7 week course that will be offered in the summer of 2022.”
The methods and genetic tools developed in this study have already been requested by fruit fly science community, and will also be made available through the fly repositories maintained in the U.S. and U.K. The course was supported by a Vice Provost Undergraduate Education grant to S.K. from Stanford University, the Stanford BOSP program at Oxford, and by the Cancer Research UK C49979/A17516 to L.A. B.-L. The syllabus used by students at the Oxford program is listed on the Stan-X publications page. For more information about Stan-X programs, please contact Dr. Lutz Kockel, lkockel@stanford.edu, Sangbin Park, sangbin@stanford.edu, or Seung Kim, seungkim@stanford.edu