"It just magically happened overnight!" - support for the digitalization of medical teaching provided by an interdisciplinary e-tutor team

Background: The forced and time-critical changeover to digital teaching and learning formats in the summer semester 2020 brought about numerous new challenges for the teaching staff of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Regensburg. Didactic and personnel support of clinical lecturers for the preparation, creation, and supervision of digital teaching materials became necessary. Project description: Since interdisciplinary teams seem to be superior in finding creative solutions, an interdisciplinary student e-tutor team was established at the Faculty of Medicine to support the digitalization of the range of courses. After their initial basic training the e-tutors had regular team meetings and internal mini-training sessions to ensure their continuous professional development. The e-tutors could be "requested" by clinical teaching staff and then accompanied the respective course preparation and implementation as required. Results and discussion: Both clinical teachers and students perceived the student e-tutors' support to be very positive. The e-tutors described the interdisciplinarity of the team as an important learning resource and their work as an exciting and instructive task. Conclusion and outlook: Due to the positive experiences with the e-tutors, the faculty is striving to establish sustainable digital teaching and learning services in the coming semesters.

Regulation of plasmodesmal transport by phosphorylation of tobacco mosaic virus cell-to-cell movement protein

Cell-to-cell spread of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) through plant intercellular connections, the plasmodesmata, is mediated by a specialized viral movement protein (MP). In vivo studies using transgenic tobacco plants showed that MP is phosphorylated at its C-terminus at amino acid residues Ser258, Thr261 and Ser265. When MP phosphorylation was mimicked by negatively charged amino acid substitutions, MP lost its ability to gate plasmodesmata. This effect on MP-plasmodesmata interactions was specific because other activities of MP, such as RNA binding and interaction with pectin methylesterases, were not affected. Furthermore, TMV encoding the MP mutant mimicking phosphorylation was unable to spread from cell to cell in inoculated tobacco plants. The regulatory effect of MP phosphorylation on plasmodesmal permeability was host dependent, occurring in tobacco but not in a more promiscuous Nicotiana benthamiana host. Thus, phosphorylation may represent a regulatory mechanism for controlling the TMV MP-plasmodesmata interactions in a host-dependent fashion.