Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education最新文献

Drug repurposing uses medicine with a given indication to treat a different disease. Primary effusion lymphoma (PEL), a cancer driven by coinfection with the Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus and the Epstein-Barr virus, lacks an effective treatment. We optimized a rapid, informative, and educational protocol for quantitatively evaluating repurposed small molecules against PEL. The approach tests measurements of PEL cell growth and viability in culture against known inhibitory concentrations. We demonstrate proper quantitative interpretation of the data by using ethacrynic acid, quizartinib, and darapladib as examples. We hope that this practical experimental pipeline will spread awareness of the potential of drug repurposing, especially for diseases like PEL that have unmet clinical needs.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of a microbial organism to resist treatment designed to kill it. It poses a significant global threat to public health, affecting humans, animals, and the environment, in a concept collectively referred to as One Health. While one of the major mitigators of this pressing issue is education, the high school curriculum in the United States does not cover any aspects of AMR. As such, to address this challenge, we developed and delivered a one-week-long unit on AMR within a One Health framework into a high school biology curriculum. The unit aimed to enhance students' understanding of AMR and its implications across the One Health sectors. A survey was designed and administered to measure current knowledge, awareness, interest, and motivation. Through a combination of lectures developed using Universal Design of Learning principles, interactive discussions using team-based learning (TBL) with the help of content experts, hands-on laboratory exercise, and poster presentations, biology students explored the mechanisms of resistance and novel mitigation strategies. Pre- and post-assessments revealed a marked improvement in students' knowledge and comprehension of AMR and therapeutic strategies, such as silver nanoparticles, bacteriocins, bacteriophages, CRISPR-Cas, and immunotherapy. This research study provides a detailed overview of the curriculum design, instructional strategies, and assessment outcomes, offering a replicable model for broadly integrating AMR education into high school curricula. We found that the AMR mitigation strategies lesson, delivered through TBL, significantly enhanced students' understanding of novel therapeutic strategies and fostered high levels of engagement throughout the AMR and One Health unit.

Graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) have become increasingly responsible for facilitating coursework in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Yet, they often receive limited, if any, professional development (PD) to support them in this endeavor and to accelerate their growth as educators. This themed issue on STEM TA PD reflects a concerted effort to address this concern, with the articles comprising the issue representing a wide array of topical contributions by authors with a diversity of roles across institutions/organizations.

In recent years, microbiologists have emphasized the importance of understanding the historical relation between microbiomes and public health as a means of contributing to social equity. Consistent with critical engaged and anti-racist pedagogical practices, we developed a curricular intervention-HEALing the Sciences-that centers critical histories of science as means to educate scientists about how science has contributed to and replicated inequities in society. Here, we describe two case studies that our interdisciplinary team designed, implemented, and assessed specifically for a module on the history of microbiology. Both case studies, "Germs and Jim Crow" and "Ghosting Race," encourage participants to think critically about the field of microbiology's historical contributions to the maintenance of racial disparities in ways that remain relevant to the present. In this manuscript, we expand on the implementation and assessment of the case studies, suggesting possible modifications that would enable instructors to adopt and adapt the research design we have developed. We have taught these case studies via remote synchronous instruction to a cohort of microbiologists, including graduate students, faculty, and research staff, who provided extensive qualitative feedback through surveys that suggest both the effectiveness of the material and possible modifications for improvement. We hope these case studies will provide STEM educators in microbiology and beyond with useful pedagogical tools to advance anti-racist efforts in the academe.

We evaluate the effectiveness of self-directed learning augmented reality (AR) handouts as learning materials for teaching microbiology to third-year medical students in the Doctor of Medicine (English Program) at Thammasat University. A stratified randomized controlled trial was conducted comparing academic performance (multiple-choice question scores), the motivation levels (motivated strategies for learning questionnaire, MSLQ), and satisfaction survey scores among students studying with AR handouts (intervention group) versus traditional handouts (control group). Twenty-four students participated in this study (n = 12 per group). There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of age, gender, total grade point average, or pre-test scores (mean of 5.08). Both groups demonstrated similar improvements in post-test scores, with means of 11.25 for the intervention group and 10.58 for the control group. However, MSLQ scores for intrinsic goal orientation were higher in the intervention group compared to the control group (5.73 vs 4.81, P = 0.002). Satisfaction survey scores, particularly in the categories of "Handouts are stimulating" and "Handouts are exciting," were also higher in the intervention group than in the control group (4.58 vs 3.50, P = 0.025, and 4.42 vs 3.17, P = 0.019, respectively). AR handouts were effective in enhancing the learning of medical microbiology and infectious diseases.

Every student, class, and semester is unique. Developing a welcoming classroom means that students with any combination of personal identifiers, demographics, or characteristics need to feel supported, significant, and integral to the course. Creating a welcoming environment for every student can be a challenge due to the heterogeneity of student backgrounds, perceptions, needs, and expectations. In microbiology, we use a streak plate to isolate individual colonies of microbes from a mixed population and enable individual species to grow and thrive. We related this core technique to a method we propose here, STREAK, that encompasses six distinct techniques in a novel combination to help individual students thrive in a classroom community by enhancing their sense of belonging and connection to their peers, instructors, and course content. STREAK is: Stop stereotypes, Time, Respectful reactions, Expectations, Access, and Know your Students. This method highlights the value of each individual student and their contributions to the classroom community, with the intended effect of increasing a sense of belonging. Additionally, feeling welcome should enable students to grow and develop on a personal level in addition to potentially enhancing classroom performance. We successfully integrated STREAK into a microbiology course and obtained evidence that this method does enhance student experience in the course when compared to similar courses that did not include STREAK. The STREAK method can be applied across various types of student populations, courses, and enrollments and provides a framework to improve the classroom environment through six research-backed best practices.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in biologics drug design is interlaced into the fabric of the drug discovery pipeline for many in the biotechnology industry. The use of AI tools in RNA therapeutic drug design has gained traction in recent years to develop more effective therapeutics in a short period of time, revolutionizing rapid-response therapeutics. Indeed, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) are streamlining RNA therapeutic design in ways we never thought were possible just a decade ago. These advances are accompanied by a plethora of new AI tools for drug design that continue to barrage the research space at unprecedented speed. As biology educators, we bear the responsibility for keeping up with technological advances in the biotechnology space, as it is up to us to prepare and equip the next generation of scientists with the use of AI platforms in this space. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) therapeutic design remains a complex challenge, despite several of them being currently in clinical use for various genetic diseases. The application of AI and ML models can predict potent and longer-lasting siRNA drug candidates for therapeutic development. Additionally, it is imperative that siRNA candidates are screened for their propensity to form secondary structures, as this can reduce targeting efficacy and result in unwanted immune responses. Though siRNA technology is commonly taught at the undergraduate level across life sciences disciplines, there remains a disconnect between the use of AI and siRNA design in the teaching curriculum. We previously described an innovative approach for teaching students the use of a generative AI tool called Biomod AI to design siRNAs. Here, we designed an inquiry-based non-wet-lab workshop for students to explore the use of an automated DL-based RNA 3D structure prediction tool called trRosettaRNA to determine the secondary structures of siRNAs. Importantly, the interdisciplinary design of this activity amalgamates both AI and RNA science concepts in a simplified format in a single workshop tailored for first-year health sciences undergraduate students.

Nearly two decades ago, over 500 biology educators from across North America contributed to the creation of the Vision and Change for Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action report, with recommendations for the development of a deep understanding of core biological ideas and practices in undergraduate students and the integration of evidence-based practices into biology classrooms. Introductory biology courses provide a conceptual foundation in biology while also developing skills essential to both the transition from high school to university and general scientific literacy. Thus, alignment of introductory biology classrooms to Vision and Change is important for fostering biological and scientific literacy in all students, even those whose only exposure to biology is introductory courses. Following the dissemination of Vision and Change were numerous frameworks, resources, and instruments that support the implementation of these recommendations in undergraduate biology programs. Here, we synthesize the tools, evidence-based practices, and structural transformations that have been used to align introductory biology courses to Vision and Change with the aim of providing both an overview of the current landscape of introductory biology education and a starting point for institutions, who, like us, are evaluating their progress toward alignment with Vision and Change.

Students of an undergraduate class were trained to explore microorganisms in milk products. Fermented curd/yogurt prepared at home was compared with commercial milk products for the presence of bacteria and yeast. Students visualized Gram-stained samples with a basic microscope and captured images by adjusting their smartphone on the eyepiece. They estimated the dimensions of the organisms using the images, after factoring in the smartphone's magnification and the microscope's field of view (FOV). Students could appreciate the health benefits of fermented milk products prepared at home by monitoring the prevalence of Gram-positive bacilli. Undergraduate teachers can readily adopt this pedagogy approach to give hands-on training to students in large labs, even within economically constrained setups.

In this era of information abundance and digital connectivity, educational videos are a transformative and widely used resource in STEM higher education. Much of what is known about the effective use of educational videos comes from analyzing videos used for content delivery and the impacts on knowledge gains or behavioral engagement with videos. Less is known about how videos may impact students' affective learning experiences, feelings, and attitudes or how to effectively use videos in science education beyond just as a content-delivery tool. This study explored the impact of three distinct video styles: a whiteboard animation, a recorded discovery lecture by one of the discoverers, and a documentary short film featuring both discoverers in conversation on student outcomes in a large-enrollment undergraduate biology class. Students were randomized to watch one of these three formats, all covering the same scientific content (i.e., the Meselson and Stahl experiment), followed by a post-video survey. The documentary film, "The Most Beautiful Experiment," which integrated interpersonal storytelling and informal dialog, had the most significant impact on outcomes related to affective learning, including science identity, attitudes about biology, speaker relatability, and emotional engagement. No significant differences in knowledge gains were observed across video styles. This study highlights the potential of personalized and embodied video formats to enrich STEM education and warrants further research into their broader applications.