Högskolan i Skövde

Undervisningsteamet vid Högskolebiblioteket i Skövde undervisar i informationskompetens på högskolans alla program. Undervisningen sker enligt en progression i tre steg som anpassas till respektive program. Sedan några år samarbetar undervisningsteamet med ett antal lärare på högskolan. Samarbetet är en del av ett större projekt – Projekt Integrerat Stöd (PIS). Projektet syftar till att integrera verksamhetsstödets insatser i utbildningarna på högskolan. I denna presentation berättar vi dels om vårt samarbete med en programansvarig lärare inom biovetenskap och dels om hur vi tillsammans med kursansvarig lärare utvecklat nya undervisningsmoment. Vi kommer också att dela våra erfarenheter av att på kursen ”Molekylär genetik” anpassa undervisningsmoment från Zoom till nya flexibla salar. 

Background: Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a risk factor for premature birth and group B streptococci (GBS) colonizing the vagina are etiological agents of neonatal infections. Significant growth of GBS in the vagina has been assumed to be detectable through urinary culture. The aim was to investigate the correlation between BV and the presence of GBS in qualitative vaginal or quantitative urinary culture, since this could predict a higher risk for perinatal morbidity. Design and setting: A consecutive prospective study of women in early pregnancy included 3101 women between 2007 and 2010, in a region of south-western Sweden. Methods: Vaginal and urine samples were obtained from women in early pregnancy at maternity health care clinics. BV was diagnosed according to the Ison/Hay classification. GBS in urine were detected in amounts as low as 100 CFU/ml. Vaginal culturing for GBS was obtained from a selected group of 481 women. Results: There was no difference in the prevalence of GBS in the urine among women with BV compared with women with lactobacilli flora (OR 0.7; 95% CI 0.4-1.1). Vaginal presence of GBS was found among 17.3% of women with BV and among 23.5% of women with lactobacilli flora (OR 0.7; 95% CI 0.3-1.4). Among the 105 women who had vaginal GBS, the urine culture of GBS was positive in only 21.9% of cases. Conclusions: Even though women with BV. have much higher concentration of bacteria in the vagina, they do not necessarily have more GBS in the vagina or urine. The modest correlation between positive vaginal culture and positive urine culture of GBS question the value of urinary culture for detection of vaginal GBS.

The use of information and communication technology in teaching is an excellent way to visualize processes as well as promote active learning in natural science, hence providing an additional dimension in teaching. KompLIT (Competence Enhancement of Teacher Education Information Technology) is a Swedish project that aims to increase the competence in pedagogical information technology for both teachers and teacher students. As part of this project the software Sunflower for Science has been tested and evaluated by both teachers and teacher students. Sunflower for Science consists of 26 programs in physics, chemistry and biology and uses an interactive approach that engages students with an activity-based learning. The outcome from the evaluation is that Sunflower for Science is very user-friendly, it promotes deeper learning as well as increases the students’ attitude towards chemistry.

Most organisms naturally accumulating trehalose upon stress produce the sugar in a two-step process by the action of the enzymes trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (TPS) and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (TPP). Transgenic plants overexpressing TPS have shown enhanced drought tolerance in spite of minute accumulation of trehalose, amounts believed to be too small to provide a protective function. However, overproduction of TPS in plants has also been found combined with pleiotropic growth aberrations. This paper describes three successful strategies to circumvent such growth defects without loosing the improved stress tolerance. First, we introduced into tobacco a double construct carrying the genes TPS1 and TPS2 (encoding TPP) from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both genes are regulated by an Arabidopsis RuBisCO promoter from gene AtRbcS1A giving constitutive production of both enzymes. The second strategy involved stress-induced expression by fusing the coding region of ScTPS1 downstream of the drought-inducible Arabidopsis AtRAB18 promoter. In transgenic tobacco plants harbouring genetic constructs with either ScTPS1 alone, or with ScTPS1 and ScTPS2 combined, trehalose biosynthesis was turned on only when the plants experienced stress. The third strategy involved the use of AtRbcS]A promoter together with a transit peptide in front of the coding sequence of ScTPS1, which directed the enzyme to the chloroplasts. This paper confirms that the enhanced drought tolerance depends on unknown ameliorated water retention as the initial water status is the same in control and transgenic plants and demonstrates the influence of expression of heterologous trehalose biosynthesis genes on Arabidopsis root development.