Teachers Notes - Professor Geoffrey Burnstock

Neurobiologist

Contents

• Introduction
• Summary of career
• Extract from interview and focus questions
• Activities
• Keywords

Introduction

Professor Geoffrey Burnstock was interviewed in 2011 for the Interviews with Australian Scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge and view science as a human endeavour. These interviews specifically tie into the Australian Curriculum sub-strand ‘Nature and development of science’.

The following summary of Professor Burnstock’s career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers’ notes. The extract discusses his role in the development of the sucrose gap technique, and the differences between smooth and striated muscle. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.

Summary of career

Geoffrey Burnstock was born in London, England in 1929. He finished his secondary education at Greenford County Grammar School in 1946 and then spent 1947 doing his National Service with the Air Force. Burnstock then enrolled in science courses at the Kingston Technical Institute and worked weekends in the graveyard. In 1950, Burnstock was accepted into King’s College, University of London. Here he completed a BSc degree (1953), majoring in mathematics and physics. Burnstock then went on to complete a PhD (1957) at King’s College and University College London, University of London. Burnstock’s PhD research was in the field of zoology, where he examined gut motility in fish. In 1956, Burnstock was invited to join the Physiology Department at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, London (1956-57). Whilst here, he developed the ‘sucrose gap technique’ for recording from smooth muscle. This led to a position in the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford University (1957-59). After spending a year at the University of Illinois on a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship (1959), Burnstock took the leap to Australia.

Burnstock took up a senior lecturer position at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Zoology (1959). He was then promoted to reader (1962) and finally professor and chairman of department (1964-75). During his time in Melbourne, Burnstock made radical discoveries about the role of ATP in neurotransmission. He returned to England and University College London in 1975 to take up a post as head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology. Burnstock held this position until he stepped down as Head of Department in 1997, whereupon he was made Emeritus Professor. In the same period, Burnstock served as president of the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience (1995-2000) and Director (1997-2004) and then President (2004-today) of the Autonomic Neuroscience Institute (now Centre) at the Royal Free and University College Medical School. Professor Burnstock continues his research into the field of neurotransmission, with links to both basic and applied research.

Professor Burnstock has received many honours throughout his career, including: Silver Medal from the Royal Society of Victoria (1970), fellowship of University College London (1995), founding membership of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1998), Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (1999), Janssen Award in Gastroenterology (2000), Gold Medal from the Royal Society (2000), Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (2000), honorary membership of the Physiological Society (2003), honorary fellowship of the Pharmacological Society (2004), honorary membership of the Australian Physiological Society (2008), Copernicus Gold Medal (2009), the British Neuroscience Association annual award (2009), the Gaddum Memorial Award (2010) and the Erasmus Medal from the Academia Europaea (2012).

Professor Burnstock was elected to the fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1971 and to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 1986. He is the editor-in-chief of six international journals and on the editorial board of 20 other international journals.

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Extract from interview

At the end of my PhD I wanted to learn physiology. I wanted to do this because I was the world expert on defecation in the brown trout – not exactly a highly competitive area. So I needed to learn more sophisticated techniques than organ bath pharmacology.

There weren’t world conferences on the defecation of the brown trout.

No, there were not. Feldberg, one of the founders of pharmacology and a great man, was at the National Institute for Medical Research. He didn’t mind oddballs like me. So I went to Mill Hill and Feldberg welcomed me into his physiology department. There I developed a technique called the ‘sucrose gap technique’ for recording correlated electrical and mechanical changes in smooth muscle. It was a wonderful technique that I developed with Ralph Straub, a guy from Switzerland.

The leading lab in smooth muscle at that time was Edith Bülbring’s in Oxford pharmacology. When she saw the result, she invited me to go to Oxford. They had been using microelectrodes in spontaneously active muscle and they got about a three per cent success rate during the year – and I can’t stand that level of failure. This new technique we developed appealed to her. So I went to Oxford pharmacology and developed the method there. That was a big break.

But smooth muscle itself: what is the difference between that and the kind of muscle that you have in your leg?

The muscles that you use for walking, moving and so forth are striated muscles. Smooth muscles are the muscles which control the movement of the gut, the uterus and the bladder. They don’t have striated biofilaments in them and they have a different physiology.

They are under remote control.

Right. Mostly they are automatically controlled through the autonomic nervous system.

An edited transcript of the full interview can be found here.
The audio of the interview as it appeared on the ABC Science Show can also be accessed here.

Focus questions
[Students may need access to a science reference book, dictionary or the internet to answer some of these questions.]

• Professor Burnstock mentions the autonomic nervous system.
  
  What does it do and what bodily functions does it control?
   
• Find definitions for striated muscles and smooth muscles and then describe what they are in your own words.
  
  Give two examples of these muscles in the human body and briefly describe where they are and what they do.
   
• Give definitions for the following terms:
  • Receptor
  • ATP
  • Intracellular
  • Extracellular
  • Transmitter
     
• Professor Burnstock helped to develop the sucrose gap technique which can be used to study the electrical activity of cells.
  
  What is this electrical activity?
  
  What are the names of the cells involved? Use labelled illustrations in your answer.

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Activities

Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. These activities align with the Australian Curriculum strands ‘Science Understanding’, ‘Science as a Human Endeavour’ and ‘Science Inquiry Skills’, as well as the New South Wales syllabus Stage 5 Science outcome 5.8.2 and Stage 6 Biology outcome 9.3.3. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.

The Australian Academy of Science

• Interviews with Australian Scientists – Professor Max Bennett. Professor Bennett describes working with Burnstock as a PhD student and their investigations into the autonomous nervous system.
• Neurotransmitters and drugs This Nova: Science in the news topic describes neurotransmitters and the contributions of some Australian researchers in this field. Ask students to read the article and then write a short report on what they have learned. Activities, further reading and useful sites are included.
• Ecosystems and Change and Circle of Life These award winning Stage 2 Science by Doing curriculum resources model an inquiry based approach to teaching science.

Other activities

• Teacher's guide to lesson 2 – neurons, brain chemistry and neurotransmission (National Institutes of Health, USA). This is a complete set of resources for teaching students about neurology and neurotransmission. It includes background information, detailed instructions for conducting activities, sample answers to worksheets and suggests strategies for assessment. Teaching masters are available for information and student worksheets. Some student activities are done online using interactive animations and fill-in-the-blank forms, while others are done using classroom discussions. This lesson plan is part of a larger site, The brain which uses the biology of addiction to help understand neurobiology.
• Signal transmission in the nervous system (Access Excellence)
  Students time how long it takes for a hand squeeze to travel around a circle of people.
• Case study: John Woodbury (Harvard University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute)
  A six-part lesson in which students learn about the nervous system and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disease. Teacher’s notes and suggested answers are included.

Neuroscience for kids (University of Washington, USA)

• Autonomic Nervous System
  Students learn about the autonomic nervous system, what it regulates and why it is important. Also includes an interactive word search puzzle.
• Neurotransmitters and neuroactive peptides
  Students exploring these pages can learn about neurotransmitters, including their discovery, classification, synthesis, binding and inactivation.
• Outside games
  A set of games that can be played to reinforce different aspects of the nervous system. Each game has a complete lesson plan that includes ideas for independent work or homework to be done after the game.

KidsHealth

• Teacher's Guide: Nervous System (PreK to Grade 2)
  A comprehensive collection of activities, classroom experiments, drawings, quizzes to help younger students understand how the nervous system works.
• Teacher's Guide: Nervous System (Grades 9 to 12)
  The activities in this teacher's guide will help students make their own connections with how the brain and the nervous system work. Includes games, printable activities, discussion questions, quizzes and further links.

Serendip Studio

• How Do Biological Organisms Use Energy?
  This site provides access to a student activity and teacher's notes that are designed to help students understand the basic principles of how biological organisms use energy, with a focus on the roles of ATP and cellular respiration. It provides a useful introduction to cellular respiration and an important conceptual background for students who will be learning the complex specifics of cellular respiration.
• Cellular Respiration and Photosynthesis - Important Concepts, Common Misconceptions, and Learning Activities
  These student activities and teachers notes provide an overview of energy, cellular respiration and photosynthesis. They summarise important concepts and common misconceptions, and suggest a sequence of learning activities to develop important concepts, and relate these concepts to familiar topics such as breathing, food, body weight and plant growth.

• Lesson: Digestion Simulation (Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, College of Engineering, University of Colorado) . This detailed teacher activity simulates the human digestion process. It analyses the functions of several stomach and small intestine fluids, and introduces the concept of simulation through a short, introductory demonstration. Students learn what simulation means and how it relates to the engineering process, particularly in biomedical engineering. Includes assessment suggestions, background information and useful links.

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Keywords

autonomic
nervous system
ATP
receptors
cell biology
neuron
neurotransmitter

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