Welcome to

BIOL 4967/BMED 4961!

Here you will find links to the relevant course materials for the Spring 2007 semester:
Please send corrections to Dr. Plopper

Lecture Powerpoint Presentations:
Fluorescence micrograph of human stem cells enclosed in a gel of collagen I. The arrow points to actin filaments (red) in the stem cells that are pulling on the collagen (green). Photo by Amanda Lund.
LBL Information:
Return to Dr. Plopper's Laboratory Webpage
Links to LBL articles:
Discussion Questions for Collagens LBL:

1. What role does inflammation play during injury repair?

2. If the results proved that IFN- γ inhibited collagen I production, why didn't IFN-γ treatment effect IPF fibroblasts?

Discussion Questions for Other ECMs LBL:

1. Why is it significant to circumvent the addition of superfluous proteins in differentiation growth medium?

2. Why would the use of a substrate like Matrigel induce myogenesis better than the traditional horse-serum medium?

Discussion Questions for ECM Signaling LBL:

1.In what manner did the authors illustrate that basement membrane was necessary/desirable for milk protein synthesis and how important did the authors indicate this ECM was to signaling pathways like this?

2. What is the importance of the inhibition of prolactin signaling when mammary cells are cultured on collagen? (Follow up to that) What is the importance to the PTP cycle and how does it interact with the ECM?

Discussion Questions for Mechanics of ECM LBL:

1. Why are uniaxial tensile tests not sufficient to characterize tissue engineered materials? Why were the glutaraldhyde-treated hybrid tissue engineered blood vessels deemed not ideal?

2. Give two reasons why the viscoelastic mathematical models are so powerful in characterizing the behavior of the different tissue engineered blood vessels in this paper?

Discussion Questions for ECM Pathology

1. What is the difference between fresh Aβ1-40 and aged Aβ1-40?

2. How does β-amyloid block the signaling pathway through integrin receptor β1?

3. What are some limitations of the methods utilized in this experiment?
A cartoon showing a sampling of the cellular proteins affected by binding to extracellular matrix proteins; note that structural proteins and signaling proteins work cooperatively to transduce binding of ECM into cellular responses (in this example, the response is a change in gene transcription in the nucleus).
Discussion Questions for Nanobiotech LBL:

1. How is polyvalence important to gel formation?

2. Why were the oscillating rheometry tests and cell function assays conducted and what is their significance with regard to prospective in vivo scaffold materials?

Discussion Questions for Tissue Engineering LBL:


1. Following the information given in this presentation do you believe that this method is ready for human trials?

2. Describe the steps that the scientists took to fabricate the vascular patch in this experiment beginning with the construction of the decelluarized matrix and ending with implantation into the canine.

3. What measures did they take to “prove” that the patch was being properly integrated with the body?

Discussion Questions for Recent Advances LBL:

1.) In what ways does the implanted graft prevent tumor progression?

2.) How does this paper reinforce the idea that cancer is a “wound that does not heal”? (Hint: Implanted tumor cells with and without the graft had similar tissue structure at about 2 weeks, and began to differ from each other after this…why?)

Last revised: Thursday, April 26, 2007