Ethics is the emphasis of our first-year Introduction to Clinical Medicine-1 course. Introduction to Clinical Medicine-1 uses problem-based learning to involve groups of seven to nine students and two facilitators in realistic clinical cases. The cases emphasize ethics, but also include human behaviour, basic science, clinical medicine, and prevention learning issues. Three cases use written vignettes, while the other three cases feature standardized patients. Groups meet twice for each case. In session one, students read the case introduction, obtain data from (...) the written case or standardized patient, identify the case's ethical problems, formulate learning issues, discuss ways to resolve the moral conflicts, and assign research responsibilities. In session two, students discuss their assigned learning issues and specify and justify clinical actions to address the case's ethical dilemmas. Following three cases, groups write an essay discussing what they learned and describing how they would approach and resolve the case's learning issues. (shrink)

Targeting of cell ablation agents under the control of tissue‐specific promoters promises to be an important tool for studies of development and function in higher organisms. Temperature‐sensitive cell ablation agents, recently developed for Drosophila, extend control to temporal as well as spatial aspects of toxin expression. Here we discuss achievements to date, together with a novel form of enhancer trap technology with the potential for driving toxin expression in a large range of cell types.

The objectives of this study were to develop a high-density chromosome bin map of homoeologous group 7 in hexaploid wheat, to identify gene distribution in these chromosomes, and to perform comparative studies of wheat with rice and barley. We mapped 2148 loci from 919 EST clones onto group 7 chromosomes of wheat. In the majority of cases the numbers of loci were significantly lower in the centromeric regions and tended to increase in the distal regions. The level of duplicated loci (...) in this group was 24% with most of these loci being localized toward the distal regions. One hundred nineteen EST probes that hybridized to three fragments and mapped to the three group 7 chromosomes were designated landmark probes and were used to construct a consensus homoeologous group 7 map. An additional 49 probes that mapped to 7AS, 7DS, and the ancestral translocated segment involving 7BS also were designated landmarks. Landmark probe orders and comparative maps of wheat, rice, and barley were produced on the basis of corresponding rice BAC/PAC and genetic markers that mapped on chromosomes 6 and 8 of rice. Identification of landmark ESTs and development of consensus maps may provide a framework of conserved coding regions predating the evolution of wheat genomes. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

A formal Ethics Consultation Service (ECS) can provide significant help to patients, families and hospital staff. As with any other form of clinical consultation, documentation of the process and the advice rendered is very important. Upon review of the published consult documentation practices of other ECSs, we judged that none of them were sufficiently detailed or structured to meet the needs and purposes of a clinical ethics consultation. Thus, we decided to share our method in order to advance the practice (...) of ethics consultation. Here, we describe a method of ECS documentation practice, including use of a formal consult report template, as well as a log for maintaining a chronological record of the consultations performed. These two documents facilitate order and organisation of the ECS. They also enable the ECS to keep an account of professional time and experience, enable quick consult trend assessments (by consult theme or ward, for example) and establish a potential registry of consults for future research study. This method of documentation, we believe, not only contributes significantly to the primary purpose of the consultation—namely, the evincing and sharing of ethical opinion about a case—but also enables consultants to improve their practice and to pursue research on clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

PERSON AND OBJECT by Roderick M. Chisholm. U.K.: Allen & Unwin; U.S.A.: Humanities Press, 1976. 230 pp. £7.25.