Search

Methadone, a well-known drug used for pain control and as a treatment for opioid addiction, can cause arrhythmias, including torsades de pointes (TdP), which may progress to ventricular fibrillation and sudden death. We present a case of a middle-aged woman with a long history of methadone use who presented to the emergency department after experiencing cardiac arrest at home. During her hospitalization, she experienced multiple episodes of TdP that improved with isoproterenol and potassium correction. The initial diagnosis was methadone-induced prolonged QT. However, even with discontinuation of methadone, her QTc remained prolonged. Congenital long QT syndrome was suspected, and genetic testing was instructed to test in the outpatient setting. She was discharged on nadolol and a LifeVest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sequencing of whole genomes and the analysis of genetic information continues to fundamentally change biological and medical research. Unfortunately, the people best suited to interpret this data (biologically trained researchers) are commonly discouraged by their own perceived computational limitations. To address this, we developed a course to help alleviate this constraint. Remarkably, in addition to equipping our undergraduates with an informatic toolset, we found our course design helped prepare our students for collaborative research careers in unexpected ways. Instead of simply offering a traditional lecture- or laboratory-based course, we chose a guided inquiry method, where an instructor-selected research question is examined by students in a collaborative analysis with students contributing to experimental design, data collection, and manuscript reporting. While students learn the skills needed to conduct bioinformatic research throughout all sections of the course, importantly, students also gain experience in working as a team and develop important communication skills through working with their partner and the class as a whole, and by contributing to an original research article. Remarkably, in its first three semesters, this novel computational genetics course has generated 45 undergraduate authorships across three peer-reviewed articles. More importantly, the students that took this course acquired a positive research experience, newfound informatics technical proficiency, unprecedented familiarity with manuscript preparation, and an earned sense of achievement. Although this course deals with analyses of genetic systems, we suggest the basic concept of integrating actual research projects into a 16-week undergraduate course could be applied to numerous other research-active academic fields.