Course: Cell Biology Part 4: Cell-Cell Interactions
Length: 7 weeks, 4-6 hrs/wk
School/platform: MIT/edX
Instructor: Profs. Rebecca Lamason and Sebastian Lourido
Quote:
This is the final cell biology course in a four-part series…. How do we know what we know about cells at a molecular level and how can we use that knowledge to design experiments to test hypotheses in cell biology? How do you go from a single cell to trillions of cells working together? And what happens when this amazing collective is confronted with pathogens?
Short version: This was a great way to end the Cell Bio series. While proteins, receptors, and the like are still important, the context is more familiar than inner-cell machinations: the structure of tissues, growth and development of various organs, reactions to pathogens and cancerous changes.
A few years ago, I came across an article by a Bio grad student who was discovering that academic biology wasn’t what he’d become enchanted with via Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and Steven J. Gould. He felt kind of screwed: “[W]hat do you do next when there is nothing you have been trained to do well enough except inspect a single protein or a single gene every day for six years[?]”
Sometimes, deep into some of these biology moocs, I have a glimmer of what he means. When you’re tracing down the result of inhibiting one protein in a pathway of inhibitors and activators, when I’m trying to remember which receptor goes with which ligand, or, at my basic level, whether it’s kinase or phosphatase that removes a phosphate, or, as in the prior course in this series, why actin matters at all, it’s hard to remember how fascinating cells and organisms are, how impossible it seems that bacteria, let alone people, live at all given the complexity necessary to sustain life.
This mooc reminded me. I don’t mean to sounds hyperdramatic, but it was exciting to see bits and pieces from other moocs – anatomy, physiology, pathology, immunology – show up (I love that “Hey, I remember this!” feeling) and to in most cases take a deeper look into how topics within those fields actually work.
The first week was all about tissues. No, not the things you blow your nose into, but bodily tissues. How many kinds of tissues are there, and what’s the difference? What holds our tissues together, how are some anchored to a basement membrane, while others move around? I remember learning about the tight junctions of the blood-brain barrier, and here I not only found out how those junctions are tightened, but where else they exist and why. And I finally found out what’s so interesting about actin and microfilaments.
Week two got into how tissues and even organs replenish themselves over time, and the importance of stem cells in doing so. One of the many mysteries of biology for me has always been, how do we start as one cell, a fertilized egg, and then turn into people with livers and kidneys and brains and skin? I’ve always found embryology mysterious, so it was interesting to get some idea of how cells differentiate. I was surprised at how interesting the intestinal epithelium can be, given how those cells regenerate so often.
Then it was on to death. Apoptosis – programmed cell death – comes up in a lot of bio courses, so it was great to see some of the mechanisms that initiate the process, and those that prevent it from starting in error. Week Four introduced salmonella and listeria, how they differ – and how they don’t – as infective agents.
Week Five introduced the immune system, a timely topic and one pretty familiar to me since I’ve previously done Rice’s three-part immunology series – not to mention the variety of explanations of immunity and how vaccines work dispersed via Twitter and TikTok over the past year, from the professional classroom versions to the goofy-but-accurate metaphors (Seize the Forks!).
The final week gave us a look at cancer at the cellular level. The bit of information that sticks with me is that cancer cells still have features specific to the types of cells from which they developed. This turns out to be useful in figuring out how to treat different cancers. We also saw an overview of what types of changes cells undergo that allow them to not only over-replicate, but move around the body and seed themselves outside the tissue of origin. I’m not particularly interested in cancer, but this really grabbed my attention and made me wonder what else I’ve been missing.
The material followed the typical structure: each week consists of a lecture broken up into several video segments, each followed by a “Test Yourself” quiz that’s graded but allows unlimited tries. A weekly quiz follows five of the lectures. Four of these quizzes are available to auditors; to take all five, and keep access to the course material requires a $99 verification fee.
These quizzes take the form of lab scenarios: you want to test a hypothesis about a protein so what qualities and functions of the protein do you need to keep in mind, and how might you test your hypothesis; or you predict what to expect from an experiment, and explain why something different happened. Often there are graphs representing results and interpretation is required. It’s the best part of MIT’s bio courses: these are not information retrieval questions, you can’t just look up the answers, you have to understand what’s going on. More teachers should pay attention to this, because it’s extremely effective, and a lot more fun than memorizing pathways. And I’m guessing it better represents the experience of a bio major and/or grad student.
As with the other parts of this series, students could submit Mudslips, that is, comments and questions about the parts of the lecture that seemed muddy or unclear. Staff also answered questions on the discussion forums; students often chimed in as well.
There were some signs that COVID had interfered with production. Most MIT Bio moocs use lectures taped in live classroom settings. Here the professors were speaking directly to camera, which has a slightly less connected sense. Prof. Lamason worked in an empty classroom using those amazing movable chalkboards; Prof. Lourido worked from what looked like a narrow office, appearing in a mini-window tucked in the corner of the screen to leave room for notes and diagrams. It seemed like there were fewer animations and diagrams, and more drawings, and the animations that were used weren’t as smoothly incorporated as usual, though that’s just an impression. None of this was disruptive or problematic; it just wasn’t peak MIT presentation. Considering the circumstances, I’m impressed they were able to put together anything at all.
I’d highly recommend this for bionerds. I remember feeling a bit disenchanted after the third part of this series, covering actin and the cytoskeleton. This course perked me back up. It made a very nice finale to an excellent series. I’ve heard they’ll be condensing the first two courses, Transport and Signaling, into one, so next year it will be a three-part series. I’m planning to take it again, this time entering material into Cerego so I have a better chance of remembering it! What can I say, I grow old, and I like it when questions pop up a year after the course has ended. Gives me another “Hey, I remember that!” moment.
Length: 5 weeks, 1-2 hrs/wk
Yu Hua’s China in 10 Words, the only nonfiction covered in the course, served as both an entry into the class, and a wrap-up, as the course is situated within a series about understanding China. An entry survey asked us to come up with ten words we connect with China, prior to reading the works or taking the course. Given the coincidence of taking this during a pandemic that began in China, and living in a country with a leader whose racism is front and center, it was a bit disconcerting [Note: I took this course in the Spring; this post has just been sitting in my notes document since then, but I… well, I forgot about it until I saw it the other day]. I connect China with the philosophies of the Warring States period, with the poetry of the Tang (or is it Song, I get them confused) dynasty, and with bits and pieces I’ve encountered in other moocs. At the end of the course, the instructor and his grad students came up with their own list of ten words to summarize contemporary China; they of course know a lot more than I do about it.
Initially, I thought Lenin’s Kisses by Yan Lianke would be the book I’d be most likely to read on my own, just based on the description: a satiric novel about a kind of travelling circus of disabled people from a poor village who turn to entertainment for economic survival. From the excerpt included, I get the impression there are important nuances that I couldn’t follow, so I’m not sure it’s where I would start.
the excerpts in translation that were provided), so that makes it tempting as well. Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, a “native soil” novel about peasant China (their word, not mine) rounded out the field.
Length: total ~14 hours
Poets.” Kincaid confesses back: “Elementary Geology. Rocks for Jocks.” This course is essentially Physics for Poets: general concepts peeled down to their simplified forms, presented via concrete examples with minimal math. 
Each of the six weeks focuses on an object that demonstrates a related group of concepts. Skateboarding, for example, introduces force, inertia, and acceleration. I’d never considered weight as a force before (it’s usually ignored in favor of mass), but it makes a lot of sense in this context. And by spending a couple of weeks focusing on force – that is, newtons – I was much better able to grasp the idea of joules when we got to energy later on. For me, that alone was worth taking the course.
The other objects are falling balls, ramps, seesaws, wheels, and bumper cars. I can say I saw a lot of things more clearly, such as what’s a force and what isn’t, and what properties are conserved. By comparing linear velocity and momentum to angular velocity and momentum, the course helped me keep a lot more organized. I’m still a little confused about some stuff, but it’s not a total jumble. 
around, plays air hockey to simulate bumper cars, and does everything he can to demonstrate various kinds of forces and accelerations while also showing off the UVA campus. There is some math, but very little, and it’s of the a=b*c variety, very simple even for me. In fact, after I finished the course, I went back and dragged out the formulas that tended to get buried in the long runs of explanation. This also was a very worthwhile process for me. 
if relatively worthless cheating). A final exam similar (at times identical) to the Preliminary Assessment finishes things off in Week Seven. 
Course: 
I first discovered Michael Puett through Harvard’s ChinaX series when I took the first few parts of it about four years ago. I’m not sure what it is that makes him such a wonderful speaker: he’s not dynamic, or funny, or even particularly attractive (hey, we all go there sometimes), at least in ways we usually think of in terms of great speakers. But I sometimes just look for videos on youtube where he’s explaining something, even something I don’t understand (Chinese history, rather than philosophy, is his academic area, though the two aren’t all that separable). In this particular course, he has a somewhat Mr. Rogers vibe, and it’s mesmerizing. And soothing. ASMR for philosophy geeks.
Chinese thought, and as someone who’s had some prior exposure to the basics of Chinese thought, I liked it as a quick review of the high points. The lectures seemed a bit repetitive, but for someone encountering the material for the first time, I suspect that would be a plus.
philosopher under discussion. For example, the dinner table or a business meeting can become a ritual space; playing a musical instrument or a sport can, after a lot of focused practice, become spontaneous. So it, too, serves as reinforcement for the particular vocabulary.
Course: 
stuff gets in and out of the nucleus. So there’s a lot about signal sequences, about channels and pores, and about enzymes, chaperones, and all kinds of supporting players. I’m still amazed every time I get even a peek at how complicated it is to keep us alive. 
two instructors; I also felt that the videos themselves were a bit more cut-and-paste (it’s not unusual for individual videos to show edits, removing classroom issues for instance), thought that’s just an impression. We started off with lectures on experiments, and with little context, I had no idea what it was we were experimenting on. Once the more process-oriented material started I was able to catch on, but it was a tough few hours there. Then again, I have the disadvantage of having never been in a lab, so I’m always a little behind the eight ball when lab work is the topic. I’m beginning to get it, though: biochem mashes things up and assays for products; genetics creates mutations and assays for function; and cell biology often uses microscopy, including some very cool fluorescing techniques. 
Each video is followed by a set of “check” questions; these count in grading, but in most cases have unlimited attempts so are pretty much free points. Three quizzes make up the bulk of the grades, and these are, of course, more difficult and in most cases only offer one attempt. The Audit version of the course does not allow access to the third quiz; that requires paying for Verified access. But the Check questions and the first two quizzes give a pretty good idea of how well you’re understanding the material. 
This series includes several fun features. Wiltrout Questions, named for one of the off-screen professors, are open-ended “What do you think about this” questions that invite students to figure out how something might work, to “encourage active engagement in thinking about cell biology and a deepened understanding of a specific concept or approach”. After each unit, students are invited to submit Mudslips indicating “the muddiest, or least clear aspect of that class period.” Then there were the “Neat Experiments” videos, detailed and carefully animated explanations of historically important lab work in cell biology that nailed down a principle or used a new technique. These aren’t new features, of course; questions in both directions have always been part of these courses (Journal Club in another course, for example), and experiments have always been central in these courses. But it’s a nice touch to formalize them.
Another fun aspect was the naming of the proteins. One set was named Mens, Manus, and Cor; it turns out the MIT motto is the first two, “mind and hand”; the “heart” was added because, well, it’s about time (and there was a third protein that needed naming). Another set was named after Greek muses or fates or something, I don’t remember. Each of these courses has little personalizing details like this; it isn’t as though there’s strong pedagogical impact, but they’re part of what makes these courses so engaging. 
Course: 
It’s one of those courses that just drifted irresistibly across my feed, whispering enroll, you know you want to. I was a little daunted by the “10 weeks, 6-7 hours/week” time estimation, but I figured, what’s the worst that could happen, I don’t finish. In retrospect, I’m not sure where they got those numbers from. All the material is released at once; it’s a six-lecture course, with one or two videos totaling about 20 minutes, and two or three jamelan exercises each. The jamelan will take a while to get used to, and I found it helpful to repeat the exercises every day or so. Still, I would consider the time estimate wildly inflated: I finished it all in a little more than a week, a couple of hours a day at most.
group. There’s a small subset of gamelan that’s used to accompany shadow puppet plays. The music can have religious or secular purposes.
Lectures were provided by Prof. Evan Ziporyn, who in 1993, founded Gamelan Galak Tika (get it? Say it fast), MIT’s gamelan 
I struggled a bit with the lingo. It’s not just that it’s in an unfamiliar language; I found it hard to organize it all: this is a type of music, this is an instrument, this is a subset of that type. I posted a question on the discussion board, along with a crude outline of what I thought the divisions were, and received a prompt and helpful reply the next morning. My biggest confusion was about the word “gamelan” itself: is it a type of music, or a type of instrument? Turns out it’s sort of both, similar to how Western music might use the term “string quartet” to describe a type of music with a certain structure played by certain instruments. That helped a lot. 
One of the extraordinary benefits of moocs – and one overlooked in the age of “get skills and a certificate to improve your job prospects” – is the ability to check out things you’ve never heard of before and might never have otherwise heard of. This mooc succeeds wildly on this dimension. It was one of those completely unexpected moocs that sometimes crop up, one of the best aspects of moocdom. I wouldn’t say it was the best mooc I’d taken, but you know what, teaching music is hard, putting up moocs is hard, and teaching music in asynchronous mode to people from all over with a wide range of musical experience is really hard. I love that they did this, and I love that they have other courses in the works. 
Length: 12? weeks, 3-6? hrs/wk
for, what reactants do you need, what would you expect to see, what does this result – graph, gel image, whatever – mean. This is, after all, what biochemists are training for, not memorizing reactions. Something I discovered late in the course: the names of the fictional lab team in the Problem Set questions are the names of biochemists. They don’t have the distinct (and amusing) personalities of those in the Molecular Bio lab 
The material is broken down into eight modules, one released every week, but the due dates allow a week of extra time for all modules. I wish I had the chops to spend just 3 to 6 hours as predicted on the home page; for me, it was more like 10 – 12 hours, though I do a lot of extra work basically copying the whole course into a Word document for future reference. Each module consists of a set of between ten and twenty video lectures; these are each followed by a short quiz that allows unlimited attempts for each question. The module is capped off by a Problem Set, where the number of attempts are more restricted and the lab scenario is usually prominent. As you might expect, the Problem Sets count for a lot more than the Test Yourself quizzes. Some weeks have far more material than others, but it might be they seemed harder to me because they hammered my weaknesses.
Some of the Problem Sets included questions that required the use of MatLab; you can connect for free through the course (in fact I still had an account from a prior course, to my surprise). I skipped these entirely. Maybe another time. Optional PyMol assignments were also included. I used PyMol in another course, and liked it a lot, but I didn’t mess with it this time; I had too much to deal with already. 
I’m a big fan of MIT’s approach, even though I’ll never set foot in a bio lab or work on an actual science degree. The Harvard Biochem 
found… 
enough to continue. Let’s face it, I’ve taken pretty much all the moocs I was interested in already, and the new ones lean heavily towards vocational/technical instruction rather than academics. 
took a couple of years ago, and The Tale of Genji was discussed in the World Literature 
books inserted into the sculpture and the kinds of paper decorations. I’d never heard of this before. A creative assignment rounded out the videos and questions: how would you design a time capsule of similar meaning? 
are used to bring the reader into the story (illustrations using the same house from different angles, for instance), and calligraphic techniques that vary depending on the work. Both form and content of the works is discussed, with an emphasis on how one affects the other. 
A Just Recompense 