Date: Friday, 26 April 2019

Venue: Seminar Room 4, G/F
Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building
21 Sassoon Road, Hong Kong

Time: 5:00 p.m.

Title: Why is anatomy difficult to learn and teach? Exploring the views of different populations of anatomy learners and teachers
Speaker: Mr. CHEUNG Chun Chung (PhD candidate)

Summary:
Anatomy education is a key component to medical and healthcare professional training. To date, however, it is difficult to pick out one single tool or approach that best suits the teaching and learning of human anatomy. Students often find anatomy difficult to learn and poor retention rate has been reported worldwide. Most studies focused on perceptions of junior medical students but few looked at other populations of anatomy learners or teachers. What are the difficulties in anatomy education and why is it difficult to learn and teach?

This qualitative study aimed to explore the perceived difficulties in anatomy education. The inclusion of four populations should provide a comprehensive outlook as it covers the whole spectrum of anatomy learners, from novice to expert level.

Title: Roles of mechanical signaling in planarian regeneration
Speaker: Miss CHEUNG Wing Lam (MPhil candidate)

Summary:
Mechanical signalling, in synergy with biochemical signalling, have been inferred to regulate various biological processes such as stem cell behaviour in development and cancer progression. In vitro studies reveal that cells sense the biomechanical environment and translate it into cellular signals regulating cell behaviour. Early studies indicated that mechanical signalling might also regulate regeneration, but how cells sense forces and how these instruct patterning and stem cell function in regeneration is not well understood. Here we show that Piezo, a mechanosensitive ion channels, might be crucial to planarian regeneration. RNAi knockdown of Piezo causes delay of the regenerative progress and defective brain and eye regeneration. During homeostasis, Piezo RNAi leads to tissue lesion on the planarian body. Decrease in stem cell number is observed. Our results suggest that Piezo potentially regulates brain patterning and stem cell behaviour during regeneration, and maintenance of stem cell population and tissue integrity during homeostasis.

ALL ARE WELCOME