What topics would members of the class prefer to cover this year?

Autoimmune diseases: what goes wrong that allows survival of lymphocytes whose antibody binding sites (or T-cell receptor binding sites, in the case of T-lymphocytes) have shapes that bind to molecules that are normal parts of your body. Can the tolerance mechanism be re-activated so as to "weed out" these antiself lymphocytes. Can other methods for selective elimination or inactivation of such antiself lymphocytes?

Why do more and more children suffer from asthma every year?
(and why does this NOT affect children from farms, or with lots of dogs, etc. Why does asthma occur at much higher frequencies in children from very clean houses?)
(And why is the NC State Government's bright idea to ban dogs & pets in day care centers?)
(Hint: Will that make the problem worse or better?)

Cell differentiation: What molecular mechanisms "lock" each of the cells of your body into transcribing only one of 200-plus particular subsets of your total number of 35,000 genes? Is it really that the genes peculiar to each differentiated cell type share enough common base sequences in their upstream "promoter" regions (analogous to what happens in prokaryote operons)? Why is cell differentiation usually so irreversible? After all, if you could make cells switch from being one differentiated cell type to being another, then would be no need for the politically very controversial "embryonic stem cells", not to mention that such stem cells will themselves be useless unless you can somehow stimulate them to differentiate into the proper differentiated cell types, and to rearrange into their proper anatomical patterns. Another unexplained aspect of differentiation is mutual exclusiveness, in the sense that some unknown mechanism prevents any cell from transcribing the genes for any combination of two or more differentiated cell types. For an analogy, there is no law against a person qualifying to be an MD and also passing the Bar Exam, so that they are a Doctor and a Lawyer. But cells are not allowed to be a nerve cell and liver cell, or even combine the properties of two kinds of muscle cells, etc, Other related mysteries include what was it like when new differentiated cell types evolve. One theory is that a previously existing cell type somehow splits into two cell types (whatever that means at the molecular, causal level!); and related to this is the theory that the embryological germ layers and their subdivisions all correspond to distant ancestral cell types, that "split" into the cell types we have today. What are the possible answers to such questions, and what evidence would we need to prove or disprove the possibilities. An additional reason for being interested is that some kinds of cancer cells definitely begin transcribing some of the "wrong" genes for their original cell type, which is detected when these "wrong" genes code for protein hormones.

Cancer chemotherapy (How to kill cancer cells without hurting too many normal cells).
Most anticancer drugs were designed on the (false) assumption that cancer cells grow and divide abnormally fast, and could thus be killed by drugs that damage DNA or microtubules.
Although it is now realized that cancer cells don't grow especially fast, those anti-growth drugs are sometimes very effective (for unknown reasons) and are still used (despite bad side effects).
The newer field of what is called "rational drug design" includes monoclonal antibodies and chemicals (like "Gleevec") that selectively block enzymes coded for by oncogenes.

What is the mechanism by which cells deposit the mineral components of bone?
(primarily calcium phosphate: which evidence indicates is NOT by secretion from the interior of cells.
What mechanism controls amounts and locations of bone formation, and what goes wrong in osteoporosis (which isn't simply a calcium deficiency)

The hox gene colinearity phenomenon. Certain families of genes coding for transcription factors are closely-linked on the chromosomes in (almost?) all animals, including humans and flies, and these genes are selectively transcribed in developing embryos in geometric patterns that match the relative positions of the genes on the chromosomes. This is (almost?) the only case in which gene locations match locations in the body where these genes are transcribed, although the genes for different kinds of mammal hemoglobins do match the time sequence in which these hemoglobins are used during embryonic development. Nobody knows the mechanisms by which these genes are "turned on" in the right geometric patterns, nor how the transcription factors cause formation of different segmental anatomical structures.

Amoeboid locomotion. There are many many different kinds, some including cytoplasmic flow, and all (probably) using actin and myosin. Almost all cells of our body undergo crawling locomotion, and the force-exerting mechanism used to propel cells can pull materials past cells, which may (or may not) be a major mechanism for forming tendons, muscles and other organs.

Sorting out to reform organs by dissociated and randomly mixed animal cells [discovered 100 years ago by UNC's H. V. Wilson] (sponges, corals, embryos of amphibians, birds & mammals)

Cytokinesis (primarily, how do the signals work by which the mitotic spindle induces the formation of a cytoplasmic ring of actin and myosin that then pinches the cell in two)

Are there really any good arguments in favor of "Intelligent Design", and if so then what counter-arguments to pro-Darwinian biologists have?

Stem cells from human blastocysts: will they really be as useful to medicine and many people claim?

Do gene promoter regions have sufficient DNA sequence uniqueness, and binding specificity, to explain cell differentiation?

What is the mechanism by which differentiation of a cell into one cell type prevent transcription of luxury (non-housekeeping) genes normally expressed by other differentiated cell types?

What is the function of introns?

What controls cell volume? Why is cell volume linearly proportional to DNA content, in the sense that tetraploid animal cells are exactly (!?) twice the normal volume of the same kind of diploid cells

Was Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore really guilty of research fraud in the notorious case that led to congressional hearings and forced him to resign as President of the Rockefeller University? (note that he is now president of Cal Tech). What happened in the 200? case of molecular research fraud in the UNC medical school? What about the Yale Biochemistry student fraud in the early 1960s? The Cornell University fraud in Ephraim Racker's lab related to tyrosine kinases causing cancer?