Undergraduate geriatric education through community service learning.

INTRODUCTION: Despite the exponential growth of the elderly population worldwide, geriatric education has been a formal component of only a few dental schools' curricula. OBJECTIVE: To describe the geriatric community service learning (CSL) component of the professionalism and community service (PACS) module, and to explore a CSL project carried out by a group of first year dental students at a long-term care facility. METHODS: A literature review was performed to present and describe the CSL component of the PACS module. Students' personal reflections were used to illustrate some of the joys and challenges of experiencing a long-term care facility environment. RESULTS: The newly developed PACS module combines community service learning with the long-term care experience. Students develop, apply and evaluate an educational health promotion activity in a long-term care facility. CONCLUSIONS: The PACS module has encouraged students to acquire comprehensive knowledge and awareness of the needs and dynamics of a long-term care as they collaboratively interacted with personnel from the facility to develop their projects. The authors would like to engage other schools in discussing the need to integrate community-based geriatric education into their dental curricula.

A combined molecular dynamics and rapid kinetics approach to identify conserved three-dimensional communication networks in elongation factor Tu.

Elongation factor (EF) Tu delivers aminoacyl-tRNAs to the actively translating bacterial ribosome in a GTP-hydrolysis-dependent process. Rapid recycling of EF-Tu, catalyzed by EF-Ts, is required for efficient protein synthesis in vivo. Here we report a combined theoretical and experimental approach aimed at identifying three-dimensional communication networks in EF-Tu. As an example, we focus on the mechanistic role of second-shell residue Asp(109). We constructed full-length structural models of EF-Tu from Escherichia coli in the GDP-/GTP-bound state and performed several 10-ns-long molecular-dynamics simulations. During these simulations, the side chain of Asp(109) formed a previously undetected transient hydrogen bond to His(22), an invariant residue in the phosphate-binding loop (P-loop). To experimentally validate our molecular-dynamics results and further analyze the role of this hydrogen bond, we determined all rate constants for the multistep reaction between EF-Tu (wild-type and two mutants), EF-Ts, GDP, and GTP using the stopped-flow technique. This mutational analysis revealed that the side chain of Asp(109) is important for acceleration of GDP, but not for GTP dissociation by EF-Ts. The possibility that the Asp(109) side chain has a role in transition-state stabilization and coupling of P-loop movements with rearrangements at the base side of the nucleotide is discussed.