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Nobel Laureate Robert Horvitz and Cell Biology (October 11, 2002, One)

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Program Summary

This week guest host Paul Raeburn sits in for Ira Flatow.

Robert Horvitz of MIT is one of this year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Dr. Horvitz shares the prize with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston for their discoveries concerning "genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death." Horvitz’s work with genes exemplifies scientific inquiry practiced at the highest levels. His discovery demonstrates the interaction between evidence and logical reasoning used by real world scientists.

Guests

Related Links and Resources

For Discussion:

Inspire future prizewinners in your classrooms to practice science in the Nobel laureate tradition. Help them to develop respect for and the skills of scientific inquiry by encouraging them to observe and to describe things accurately and to understand the value of doing these well. Choose tasks that call for good reasoning and learning by observation alone and by doing something to things and noting what happens. Give them opportunities to ask questions about the reasoning that they see others using in scientific arguments and that they are using themselves.

1. What is a Nobel Laureate? How are the prizewinners chosen? What is the time frame for granting the awards?
2. Horvitz’s discoveries involve three genes, two that are needed to help cells die when they should, and a third gene that interacts with the other two and protects against cell death. In what ways do his discovery change prior thinking?
3. Horvitz also was lauded for connecting what he learned about the worms to humans when he located a human gene that appeared similar to one of the two "death genes" in the nematode. Why does this finding give experts hopes that cures or treatments are ahead for several disabling or killer diseases? Which diseases might be affected?

Activities

Learn about cells as organizers at this Web site created by scientists that imparts information about cell structure, cell actions, and more. At Biology4Kids (now a free site in 2006-2007 after five years as a subscription site) [Link updated August 5, 2007] take a tour of a cell and find over 70 photo-enhanced examples of geographic occurrences.

Cells Alive! offers digitized video microscopy of living cells and organisms. Click on Apoptosis and view the programmed cell death, part of the work that earned Science Friday guest Robert Horvitz and others their Nobel Prize. Using interactivity, kids can magnify and compare the relative sizes of cells and organisms such as dust mites or human hair cells with the head of a pin. In another area they can compare viruses, bacteria and human cells or examine plant, animal and bacterial cells. In another area they can watch animated cells dividing. Locate the cell “cam” and see how cancer cells and bacteria change and divide.

Teachers can find a rich source for lesson plans at Cells for Kids. Find the URLs to various sites that support various learning activities where students create cells on the ceiling make cells from flavored gelatin, cook up edible cells, and more.

Set your browser for BrainPOP - Cells and Basics [Link updated August 5, 2007] and find a movie and quiz appropriate for middle schoolers. This site has a subscription service but you can sign up for a 14-day free trial subscription and take advantage of some of the site’s features.

Technology is a tool at Virtual Cell, a collection of still images, texts, and movies covering the structure and functioning of a typical plant cell. Cut, rotate, and move inside cells using a series of clicks. The site is hosted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Life Sciences department.

The Cell is a ThinkQuest Third Place prize-winning site (1996) created by students. There is mostly text here with a menu on the lower left to guide navigate through the site. The links provided here are worth exploring.

Visit the Nobel Prize Internet Archive to learn more about the winners of world-class prizes from literature, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics, to the physiology or medicine prize won by Robert Horvitz and his colleagues.

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

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