Syllabus and Faculty Contacts
Looking Glass Information and Faculty Contacts
General Information
This course will explore cells and tissues of the human body (histology or micro-anatomy) by the use of various microscopic techniques. Special emphasis will be placed on the structure-function relationship in different tissues and organs and the role of stem cells in tissue regeneration. The lectures will be supplemented by the practical analysis of various organs, tissues and cells using virtual microscopy. This course is geared towards graduate and upper level undergraduate students with an interest in the biomedical sciences and with a basic knowledge in cell biology and/or biochemistry. At the end of the course students should be able to recognize and interpret microscopic tissue images and understand how the cellular organization of organs enables them to perform their specific functions.
By the end of the year, we hope that you have acquired a reasonable working knowledge of:
- how cells associate to perform the functions for which they are specialized, and
- how organized groups of cells (tissues) are arranged to form the organ systems of the body.
While the emphasis in histology is on the structure of cells, tissues and organs, structure has very little meaning without understanding the function, much of which is also presented in the other components of the curriculum. There is an emphasis to teach comparable subjects at about the same time, and we ask that you try and correlate structure and function. Most diseases cause structural abnormalities that result in the problems with which you, as a physician, must contend. One reason for studying histology (the normal structure) is so that you can better understand a pathological (abnormal) change and the consequences of that change.
You will be spending most of your time studying two dimensional sections of three dimensional structures, and will encounter a number of atypical perspectives caused by the plane of section (Imagine that you are sectioning an orange in sagittal, parasagittal, equatorial and diagonal planes. The appearance of the orange sections is quite different depending upon the plane of section–the same variation in appearance occurs in tissue and organs because of the angle of sectioning). Try to find a typical perspective for your introduction to a new tissue or organ (use your atlas as a guide). Then try to imagine what it would look like in three dimensions.
Organization of the course:
24 meetings of 2 contact hours, most lectures will be followed by a 20 to 30 minute lecture-style laboratory segment (adding up to 2 hours per session), which will use virtual microscopy for a practical demonstration of the material covered by the lecture and for a deeper understanding of the basic concepts. The course provides 4 contact hours per week and is offered for 4 credits. After the lecture/lab sessions all students are expected to use the course website, which contains instructions and laboratory tasks, as well as supplementary learning resources, to deepen their understanding of the material and to develop their skills of identifying histological structures.
Teaching Materials
You are expected to learn histology by studying the slides of tissues and organs (item C below) using virtual microscopy. The other items of materials, listed below and on the Medical Histology Website or C-Tools, should serve as the sources of information necessary for you to understand the functional significance of the structures that you view in the virtual images.
REQUIRED text: Histology: A Text and Atlas, 6th Ed., 2010 by Ross and Pawlina. Older editions of the textbook will work as well. However, the webpage reading assignments are keyed to the 6th edition)
Lectures
Please, consult your daily calendar for each lecture and laboratory hours. The lecture should serve as a study guide for each topic area. The lecture contents should also serve as a guide for the exam and quiz questions since lecturers formulate the majority of the questions. Most of the lecture slides (images) will be placed in the Histology resource pages on the web for you to view after lecture. It would be very useful to read the relevant text chapter before lecture.
Examinations And Grading
2 exams, one midterm and one final, and 6 quizzes will all be open book (the last subject before the midterm and final exam will not be covered by a quiz, but by the exams). Quizzes will cover the last three to four lectures, three to four questions per lecture (about 60-80 total quiz questions). Midterm and final exam will be about 44 questions each + 4 more difficult bonus questions. This will add up to a total of 140-160 questions + 8 more difficult bonus questions. Quizzes and exams will be open book. All questions will have a multiple-choice format and most will be image-based. The images and questions contained in the quizzes and exams may not be copied or distributed and violations of this policy will be considered honor code violations. Graduate students, who are taking the course as CDB550, will have an additional writing requirement: To receive CDB550 credit, each student must formulate 2 sets of 5 multiple choice questions, each set covering the first half and the second half of the course respectively. Each question should have only one indisputably correct answer. Only one question in each set may be a true/false questions, all other question should have at least 4 possible answers. Only one question in each set may be a pure text question, all other questions should include and require an image (either light microscope, electron microscope or a drawing). Each of 5 questions in each set should represent a different lecture topic. Please submit your two sets of questions as a Word file to the GSI by the time of midterm and final exam respectively. Late submissions may result in a point reduction. Questions, which combine identification tasks with functional aspects of the cells and tissues involved will be rated higher than questions, which address only one aspect. Other important points will be clarity of the question posed, equal credibility of the different possible answers and the relevance and importance of the concept tested. For each question, include not only the correct answer, but also very short statement, why this is the correct answer (often one or two sentences will suffice).
Problems and Administration
If you have a histology problem, see the faculty member responsible for your laboratory section or the course director. You can also email one of your lab teachers or Dr. Hortsch with Histology questions. A list of the course faculty with relevant information can be found in the Faculty Contact section of the course.
For website, sever, or other technical problems please contact the LRC Help Desk
Introduction to the Lab
Electron Micrographs: The digital EM images on the webpage are for the most part, micrographs provided by Dr. Johannes A. G. Rhodin, who also authored “An Atlas of Histology” (Oxford Press, 1974). Remember that the material contained herein is copyrighted, and it is intended to be used by histology students only. More detailed comments on electron micrographs appear at the end of the Epithelia section (the first lesson in this laboratory guide).
How to enroll:
Successful completion of ONE of the following or an equivalent course is a prerequisite and exceptions are at the digression of the course directors: AT 310/PHYSED 310; BIOLOGY 172, 174, 208, 225 or 305; BIOLCHEM 212 or 415; BIOMEDE 231, 321 or 403; CHEM 351; MCDB 306, 308, 310 or 428; NURS 210 or PHYSIOL 201. Admission will be limited with preference given to graduate and senior undergraduate students. Undergraduate students should sign up under the CDB 450 number, whereas graduate students should enroll under the CDB 550 number.
Time and Location:
Tuesday and Thursday 8 to 10 am in the Undergraduate Science Building (USB) Room 1230. For further information, please contact Dr. Hortsch.
Faculty Contacts
Course Director |  | Dr. Michael Hortsch hortsch@umich.edu |
Course Director |  | |
 | Dr. Yu-Chi Shen yshen@umich.edu | |
 | Dr. Michelle Wood woodmich@umich.edu | |
 | ||
 | Dr. Sun-Kee Kim kimsk@umich.edu |