Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education最新文献

Sample preparation is a key step in most biological experiments, including in the subject of lipidomics. Lipidomics focuses on the study of lipids produced in specific organisms, so samples required in lipidomics experiments are usually solutions of biological lipids. To make sure that the scientific experiments are reliable, lipid samples in a set of controlled experiments must be standardized, that is, have almost the same quality. Preparing standardized samples is therefore an important taught component in most undergraduate as well as postgraduate programs in lipidomics. Previously, the standardization of lipid samples has only been assessed qualitatively. How to evaluate the effectiveness of students' standard operation training is crucial. In this paper, we propose a quantitative assessment metric and process for preparing standardized lipid samples, which is further evaluated in our teaching practice. We find out that the proposed method is effective, with the help of which we can identify gaps in our teaching.

Biochemistry lecture and lab courses often contain enzyme kinetics as part of the curriculum, but do not regularly focus on interpreting the kinetic constants. Similarly, as we implement course-based undergraduate research experiences in our lab courses, we encourage our students to produce publication-quality images and determine the enzymatic kinetic constants with the high precision. This “Methods and Techniques” article provides recommendations on preparing for enzyme kinetics while using sample Mathematica or Python scripts to perform nonlinear data fitting using variations of the Michaelis–Menten equation. This article describes why the k_cat/K_m value should have greater importance than K_m, and supports renaming the ratio k_cat/K_m as a new constant, k_SP, thereby disconnecting K_m from our interpretation of this value. Fitting enzymatic data directly to k_cat and k_SP instead of k_cat (or V_max) and K_m provides the same values in data fitting, but with lower uncertainties in their values. This article provides a guide to help with experimental design, choosing appropriate modeling equations, and preparing publication-quality graphics. Bridging the theoretical knowledge from lecture to the practical research applications of enzyme kinetics are required for careers in drug development, metabolomics, and metabolic engineering. Survey results indicate that students with this instruction gain confidence in interpreting and producing enzyme kinetic data, as well as in determining kinetic constants from their data and explaining these results. Together, this article provides a guide to help students and instructors as they collect and interpret enzyme kinetic data.

In the production of biomolecules of industrial interest, bioprocesses must ensure economic viability and sustainability. However, in biochemical or biotechnology academic programs, there seems to be a lack of integrated approaches to holistic bioprocess design. Currently, there is a strong emphasis on molecular biology, genetics, or derived technologies, overlooking aspects such as lab-scale production, purification strategies suited for a given biomolecule, and cost evaluation for large-scale production processes. This study proposes a comprehensive approach to bioprocess development for undergraduate education. It includes fundamental molecular biology and genetics for producing a genetically modified Escherichia coli strain, upstream and bioreactor technology, downstream technologies tailored to biomolecule characteristics, and economic evaluation. This article details educational strategies centered around a collaborative project for recombinant protein production (chromoproteins), implemented and assessed through various Biotechnology Engineering courses. The findings show that students gained a comprehensive understanding of chromoproteins production at the lab scale. They made significant progress in acquiring technical skills in molecular biology, genetic engineering, and biomolecule production goals, as well as estimating bioreactor scales and selecting and calculating upstream and downstream processes based on lab-scale data. Integrating specialized software tools such as Benchling for recombinant technology, MATLAB for unitary processes modeling, and SuperPro Designer for economic and technical studies significantly enhanced student confidence and proficiency in evaluating and sizing bioprocesses for chromoprotein production. They also pointed out the importance of chromatographic processes in protein recovery. Overall, these holistic educational strategies facilitated a more profound skill acquisition, preparing students to thoroughly design and evaluate bioprocesses.

Cell biology research methods and techniques is one of the training courses for graduate students before enter the laboratory in many universities. However, due to the limited time of experimental teaching while the teaching contents are increasing, choosing suitable teaching content has always been a challenge faced by experimental teaching. Here, we introduce a demand-oriented experimental teaching design and its application to solve this problem. Firstly, we referred to cell biology-related journals, counted the frequency of cell biology experiments used in these journals, and modularly classified these experiments according to their detection purposes, from which we selected high-frequency experiments as teaching content. Secondly, we adopted a problem-driven approach to cultivate students' experimental design and problem-solving abilities. For other experiments in the module, students are encouraged to engage in self-study through the “Internet + Education” platform to enhance their independent learning ability. Moreover, the teacher conducted on-site assessment of students' operational skills, experimental results, and data analysis abilities. Finally, its effectiveness was evaluated through questionnaire analyses and focus group discussion. Students reported that the experimental skills learned in the course were widely used in their research, which helped them adapt to graduate research more quickly and gain confidence in future research. Student feedback also showed that they had significantly improved their experimental operations, design skills, and data analysis. In summary, this study confirms that demand-oriented experimental teaching design and practice are effective and provide a reliable model for experimental teaching reform in other educational institutions.

This study expanded the “cell agglutination reaction” experiment in undergraduate cell biology teaching by integrating a sugar inhibition component. Lectins bind to specific sugars. In the traditional cell agglutination reaction, lectin is used to cause cells to aggregate via binding to sugars present on the cell surface. Here, various small sugars were added to red blood cell agglutination reactions. If the lectin binds to the added sugar that inhibits cellular aggregation. The degree of cellular aggregation was measured for each added sugar and controls, and hence used to assess the binding of the lectin to each sugar type. The experiment allows students to observe cell adhesion under the influence of lectin, deepening their understanding of glycosyl groups, lectin binding to sugar sites, inhibition of lectin binding, and the glycosyl composition of cell surfaces. The experimental approach cultivates students' problem-solving skills and enhances teaching effectiveness. By incorporating current real-world issues, students' interest in independent learning is increased.

Laboratory experience is vital to undergraduate science education. It allows students to observe and conduct engaging experiments to enhance their skills and literacy, helps them retain knowledge, and deepens their understanding of related content covered in lectures. This paper reports a 4-week undergraduate laboratory exercise on Escherichia coli gene editing by recombineering, recombination-mediated genetic engineering, with or without clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and their associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9). Gene editing makes precise modifications to the DNA of living organisms that influence their development and functions. As technology evolves, recombineering and CRISPR/Cas9 have replaced methods that use restriction enzymes and DNA ligase and are applied to a wide variety of research and applications. It is necessary to introduce undergraduates to these two rapidly growing technologies. Student results obtained from the lab indicate that antisense single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide (ssODN) has a 15–20 times higher recombineering efficiency than the sense strand. Treatment with a plasmid containing the crRNA target of CRISPR/Cas9 increased recombineering efficiency. Instructional assessments, based on student feedback, revealed that the lab had clear objectives, instructions, and explicit protocols, with sufficient time to complete them, and was found to be interesting and worthwhile. Student learning outcomes, assessed by comparing pre-lab questions and post-lab tests, suggested that they learned the underlying principles and detailed molecular mechanisms. Besides learning the technologies and acquiring basic laboratory skills, students practiced key components of scientific research, such as data collection, analysis, and scientific communication.

Face-to-face teaching was quickly moved to remote teaching following the introduction of a national lockdown in the United Kingdom (UK) on 23 March 2020 to tackle the coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19). In this context, De Montfort University (DMU, UK) expanded and adapted its pre-existing open-access virtual learning environment, named e-Biology (http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/ebiology/), to better support clinical biochemistry education in a remote setting. Originally created in 2017 to assist students' transition into biomedical science programmes, e-Biology was updated with specific modules for clinical biochemistry, including theoretical, laboratory, microscope, and case study components. This package has been used to teach final-year BSc Biomedical Science students since 2020/2021. Detailed analysis of scores of two multiple choice question tests distributed at the beginning (preScore; 39.3% and 41.4% successful, for all the cohort and paired students' exams, respectively) and end of the module (postScore; 41.8% and 45.3% successful), did show an improvement in students' overall performance but without statistical significance. However, this improvement showed statistical significance for the paired exams for the last cohort (2022/2023; from 34.0% to 46.8%; p < 0.05; n = 13/146). A total of 77.9% of respondents to the feedback questionnaire concurred that the mini-games and exercises within the e-practicals facilitated their learning and aided in their preparation for the unseen practical exam, while 13.0% neither agreed nor disagreed. These findings suggest that e-Biology was an effective tool for supporting the teaching and learning of applied clinical biochemistry remotely and may serve as a useful resource for blended and online education across STEM disciplines.