The American Society of Nephrology Kidney TREKS program (Tutored Research and Education for Kidney Scholars) provides medical students interested in nephrology additional opportunities for research training and mentoring with established renal faculty and nephrologists.  One component of the Kidney TREKS program is Origins of Renal Physiology:MS1, a one-week intensive laboratory summer short course held at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

This course will enhance first-year medical students’ understanding of basic physiological concepts through hands-on experiments in a research laboratory.

The course will be organized around several research modules that examine all aspects of kidney function.  Modules include: water homeostasis, salt homeostasis and secretion, acid/base homeostasis, glomerular function, and personalized medicine and genetics. In each module, classical experiments using model systems (toad, zebrafish, roundworm, shark, Xenopus oocyte) are combined with modern molecular techniques.