The central dogma of molecular biology describes the transfer of genetic information from nucleic acids to proteins and stipulates that the system cannot work in the reverse direction. As a fundamental principle in biology, the dogma is as influential as it is controversial. Some commentators have debated the central dogma's empirical accuracy…

The origin of life is one of the most interesting and challenging questions in biology. This article discusses relevant contemporary theories and hypotheses about the origin of life, recent scientific evidence supporting them, and the main contributions of several scientists of different nationalities and specialties in different disciplines. Also…

Students who experience research as undergraduates tend to remain in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Since course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are often expensive to implement, we developed a relatively inexpensive first-semester research course for majors entitled "Freshman Research in…

Arguing from evidence is one of eight key science practices in which students should engage. It is an essential component of science, yet students have difficulties with this practice. We describe a scaffolded claims-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation framework that is embedded within a new eight-week, freely available curriculum unit…

Students come to science class with many ideas of how the natural world works, some of which do not match the consensus of the scientific community and can lead to misunderstandings. Because a growing body of educational research indicates that these misconceptions can serve as resources for learning, we developed a four-point plan to leverage…

Innovation in assessment of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses in subjects such as biology and biochemistry is a widely discussed topic. We report the use of a novel, research-integrated course assessment designed to increase students' self-motivation and improve their learning outcomes. We encouraged submissions to…

Although research and new technologies have introduced different ways of observing microorganisms, including scanning and electron microscopy, these methods are expensive and require equipment that is typically not found in a middle school classroom. The transmission-through-dye technique (TTD; Gregg et al., 2010), a new optical microscopy method…

Ocean acidification, a product of CO[subscript 2] absorption by the world's oceans, is largely driven by the anthropogenic combustion of fossil fuels and has already lowered the pH of marine ecosystems. Organisms with calcium carbonate shells and skeletons are especially susceptible to increasing environmental acidity due to reduction in the…

This paper presents an activity that engages students in model-based reasoning, requiring them to predict the behavior of the trp and lac operons under different environmental conditions. Students are presented six scenarios for the "trp" operon and five for the "lac" operon. In most of the scenarios, specific mutations have…

A logical question to be expected from students: "How could life develop, that is, change, evolve from simple, primitive organisms into the complex forms existing today, while at the same time there is a generally observed decline and disorganization--the second law of thermodynamics?" The explanations in biology textbooks relied upon by…

This article presents a tangible model used to help students tackle some misconceptions about enzyme actions, particularly the induced-fit model, enzyme-substrate complementarity, and enzyme inhibition. The model can simulate how substrates induce a change in the shape of the active site and the role of attraction force during enzyme-substrate…

Identification of macromolecules in food is a standard introductory high school biology lab. The intent of this article is to describe the conversion of this standard cookbook lab into an inquiry investigation. Instead of verifying the macromolecules found in food, students use their knowledge of the macromolecules in food to determine the…

In this practice-based lab, students are provided with four Olympic athlete profiles and simulated blood and urine samples to test for illegal substances and blood-doping practices. Throughout the course of the lab, students design and conduct a testing procedure and use their results to determine which athletes won their medals fairly. All of the…

Although the development of next-generation (NextGen) sequencing technologies has revolutionized genomic research and medicine, the incorporation of these topics into the classroom is challenging, given an implied high degree of technical complexity. We developed an easy-to-implement, interactive classroom activity investigating the similarities…

Proteomics is an emerging area of systems biology that allows simultaneous study of thousands of proteins expressed in cells, tissues, or whole organisms. We have developed this activity to enable high school or college students to explore proteomic databases using mass spectrometry data files generated from yeast proteins in a college laboratory…