Technique-centered biochemistry or molecular biology undergraduate laboratory curricula do not offer significant opportunities for thoughtful, in-depth exploration of the science to foster investigative learning. To demonstrate inclusion of inquiry-driven laboratory experiments into the undergraduate biochemistry and molecular biology curricula, a…

Students always encounter difficulties in studying biochemical pathways. They are especially weak in understanding the relationships between metabolic pathways and their integration because these pathways are always taught one-by-one in class. In the past, various online resources have been developed to facilitate students' understanding toward…

Biochemistry textbooks often provide a disconnected, highly mathematical, and decontextualized treatment of thermodynamic and kinetic principles, which renders topics like protein folding difficult to teach. This is concerning given that graduates entering careers, like the pharmaceutical industry, must be able to apply such knowledge and related…

We investigate the effectiveness of an active learning curriculum designed for an upper division Biochemistry series at a large, public research university. The goal was to determine how effective this format was when compared to a parallel conventional course, and to see if the active learning series can be run with limited resources (one…

Purpose: To evaluate whether excess body mass influences the heart rate variability (HRV) indexes at rest, and to correlate adiposity indicators and the aerobic fitness with cardiac autonomic variables in metabolically healthy young adults. Method: In all, 41 untrained males (M[subscript age] = 21.80, SD = 2.14 years), 14 normal weight…

For medical students, we combine the laboratory practice with clinical applications by developing biochemical and molecular biology experiments. In this experiment, students first collect their own buccal epithelial cells by a noninvasive mouthwash method. Then, they extract genomic DNA and perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify…

These three biology songs can be used for educational purposes to teach about biochemical concepts. They touch on three different topics: (1) cancer progression and germ cells, (2) gene expression, promoters, and repressors, and (3) electronegativity and the biochemical basis of photosynthesis.

Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is the most classical technique favored worldwide for resolution of macromolecules in many biochemistry laboratories due to its incessant advanced developments and wide modifications. These ever-growing advancements in the basic laboratory equipments lead to emergence of many expensive, complex, and tricky…

Laboratory exercises focused on protein quantification are frequently conducted in traditional undergraduate biochemistry laboratory curriculum. The laboratory course described here is designed to provide students with experience in measurement of protein content in milk powder by moving reaction boundary titration (MRBT), a new rapid technique…

Students in an upper-level physical chemistry course used a polarimeter to measure the molar optical rotation of different optically active amino acids to confirm the Clough, Lutz, and Jirgensons (CLJ) rule. This rule states that an amino acid is in the l-configuration if the molar optical rotation becomes more positive upon the addition of acid…

Recombinant protein expression and site-directed mutagenesis of target genes have demonstrated an increasing importance in the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, and medicine. By using the flavodoxin of the model cyanobacterium "Anabaena" sp. PCC 7120 as a laboratory tool, we designed a comprehensive laboratory…

The goal of this study was to examine how individual differences in physiological arousal and reactivity moderated the relation between peer victimization and reactive and proactive aggression. Participants were 58 adolescents (61.2% boys; 54.9% African American) in the age range of 12--15. Participants self-reported peer victimization, reactive…

A Microsoft Excel workbook has been developed to simplify the quantitative analysis of experimentally measured titration curves for diprotic and triprotic amino acids such as glycine, arginine, histidine, and glutamate. Students perform the titration, enter the data into the worksheet, and manually adjust the resulting pK[subscript a] values to…

The online environment poses a number of challenges, including creating opportunities for students to interact and get to know each other. I propose adding online discussions that can allow students to explore the real-world implications of biochemistry to provide course context, build the classroom community, diversify student assessment, and…

Difficulty index and its derivative performance index (PFI) have been commonly used to measure student learning outcomes. However, these indexes have a high volatility and low sensitivity. This work has established the simplex learning index (SLI), which has a low volatility and high sensitivity. To construct SLI, students were divided into two…