U of T  Teaching
 
 
 
Pedagogical philosophy and useful resources  A university degree by no means comes easily. There’s a lot of facts to learn, but even more importantly, learning how to think about a problem both critically and creatively is the overall goal. It’s been said (and I don’t know by who) that education is what’s left after you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learned. There’s truth to this, because at any given time, some facts stand out above others, so the “facts” as we understand them must change as we learn more. As such, my teaching focusses on challenging students to think for themselves, and this is true both at the research bench as in the classroom. I really enjoy interacting with students and I aim to provide a rich learning environment where you will be challenged to deeply understand the every day, imagine models for how things you observe can work and design (plus carry out) rigorous experiments to test them. Here are some helpful books to get you started (and this is a work in progress): Experimental Design for Biologists by D. J. Glass (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press) is an excellent book for those starting out. It teaches the importance of defining a good experimental question, of designing broad based experiments to answer them, and of critically analyzing the data. For an introduction to budding yeast as a model system, H. Madhani’s “From a to alpha: Yeast as a model for cellular differentiation” (another CSHL Press book) is a simple introduction to budding yeast. We use this book in my fourth year course, supplemented with lots of real world data from the literature, and it’s a good place to start. From a practical standpoint, I like Fred Sherman’s article “Getting Started with Yeast” not to mention the Guthrie and Fink (eds) "Guide to Yeast Genetics and Molecular and Cell Biology”, As a student, one of my favorite was D.M. Freifelder’s Physical Biochemistry: Applications to Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It explains the basic principles behind many current experimental approaches (including fluorescence microscopy), and provides lots of practical examples. It’s a classic (and you can buy a used one cheap). Another classic work is edited by Hames and Rickwood, Gel Electrophoresis of Proteins: A Practical Approach. My companion throughout graduate school: R.K. Scopes...Protein Purification: Principles and Practice. While a bit outdated now that everyone overexpresses their proteins with tags for purification, it’s still very much worth knowing how proteins can be purified based on their biophysical properties. Chock full of useful stuff. For free, the back of the New England BioLabs catalogue also has a great collection of useful facts about Molecular Biology, explains genotypes of common cloning E.coli’s, discusses the use of restriction enzymes and their properties etc. Ask for a free copy, and consult it often. I’ve got an old version from 2002 that’s annotated so I know where everything is. (I only use the new one to check prices, and that’s generally easier on the web anyway). Molecular Cloning (Maniatis) and Current Protocols in Molecular Biology (aka Red Book) from Wiley Interscience are excellent resources for protocols, but always compare and contrast a few different ones to get a feel for what’s really essential in a protocol and what’s there for other reasons. You’ll often find odd stuff like pH so far from a buffer’s pKa that it’s buffering capacity is nearly nill...so you know that pH isn’t likely to be critical. But above all in the lab, keep your wits about you and remember to have fun!
Undergraduate
MGY451  Genetics of Development:  Yeast and Worms  
Course Coordinator:  
Prof Andrew Spence
 
MGY480 Independent Research Project.  course coordinator: Prof Andrew Wilde
 
Graduate
MMG1012 Chromosome S & M
Co-coordinators: Bri Lavoie and Dan Durocher