Welcome to the Ciliates in the Classroom web page! This page represents a joint effort by ciliate biologists to provide classroom protocols, background information and web links for instructors interested in using ciliates in their classroom.

Why use ciliates in the classroom? Ciliates offer many advantages for instructors that make them useful as model systems for demonstrating basic principles in biology. These advantages are:

• cheap and easy to grow
• no health concerns
• simple genetics
• large cells that are easy to manipulate
• display many distinct phenotypes that have relevance to higher organisms
• supported by a small and friendly international research community
• intrinsically fascinating for students to watch

Examples of topics that can be addressed using ciliates include:

• cell motility
• cell structure
• cell division rates
• cell predation/competition
• chemotaxis
• genetic principles/inheritance
• regulated exocytosis
• cell physiology of action potentials
• cell signaling/cell mating
• development/DNA amplification
• regulation of osmotic pressure/contractile vacuoles

As a way to help instructors use these organisms in their classroom or as part of student research projects the ciliate community has commissioned this web page to be a resource for such efforts.

Other Protozoa. For a broader perspective on the use of protozoa in the classroom please obtain a copy of the book "Exploring the World Using Protozoa" edited by O. Roger Anderson and Marvin Druger and published jointly by the National Science Teachers Association and the Society of Protozoology. This excellent publication covers a wide range of simple lab exercises that use protozoa and are suitable for Junior High to undergraduate students.

If you are interested in the use of protozoa as a research model system for undergraduate students you will find and excellent resource that instructs you on the use of Chlamydomonas as a research organism at Chlamydomonas Genetics Center.