The authors, a chemistry professor and a librarian, used a qualitative survey to assess student perceptions of a Wikipedia editing assignment that they included in a large upper-level biochemistry course. The assignment was initially intended as a public-facing alternative to a short research paper, emphasizing information literacy and scientific…

Designing a relevant and engaging curriculum for biochemistry undergraduates can be challenging for topics which are at the periphery of the subject. We have used the framework of context-based learning as a means of assessing understanding of quantum theory in a group of students in their junior year. Our context, the role of retinol in skincare,…

Teaching chemistry and biology students about biologics design remains challenging despite its increasing importance in pharmaceutical development. Monoclonal antibodies, commonly called mAbs, are the most popular biologics. They have been developed into drugs to treat various diseases in the past decades. Multiple challenges exist for designing…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of argumentation, during the hypothetico-deductive reasoning (HDR) process in the problem-based learning (PBL) approach, on nursing students' achievements and to determine the argumentation levels in the biochemistry course on the topic of endocrine and nervous systems. The participants…

Sex and fertility education is essential to enable people to make informed choices. School is an important source of education, so we examined the current curriculum relating to sex and fertility education in England and compared it with students' accounts of their experiences. We analysed the Awarding Body GCSE science and biology specifications…

Isoenzymes are variant forms of the same enzyme activity that exhibits different tissue distribution. When cells are damaged, intracellular content leaks into the blood stream, making them potential biochemical markers. Undergraduate health sciences students are expected to interpret laboratory findings of serum levels of biochemical markers and…

Exposure to real-life applications of quantitative analysis techniques based on two gas chromatography (GC) experiments was provided to a large cohort of sophomore-level students. In one experiment, students assessed blood alcohol content by internal standardization using a homemade headspace system similar to methods implemented in forensic…

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) are used widely in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and clinical medicine labs. At the same time, they appear to be underrepresented in chemistry and biochemistry curricula, even though their sensitivity, selectivity, and ease of use would argue for their widespread use. We describe here an online ELISA…

The Hill equation, which models the cooperative ligand-receptor binding equilibrium, turns out to be useful in modeling the progression of infectious disease outbreaks such as CoViD-19. The equation fits well the data for total and daily case numbers, allows tentative predictions for the half-point and end point of the epidemic, and presents a…

The use of the thermodynamic formalism in the investigation of biochemical reactions constitutes one of the key analysis in bioenergetics, and the first step in such analysis is the selection of the adequate reference state. For biochemistry majors, thermodynamic analysis based on the chemical reference state is used in Physical Chemistry courses,…

Previously most studies indicated that high intensity training is a powerful stimulus to acute increases in blood testosterone hormone levels in males. The testosterone responses to exercise in females are controversial; while some studies have shown increases, others have suggested no change. The aim of this study was to determine alterations in…

Biochemistry is about structure and function, but it is also about data and this is where computers come in. From my time as a graduate student and post doc, whenever I encountered data I thought, "I can work this up by hand, but I think a computer could do a better job." Since that time, I have been working at the interface of…

The following story tells the details of the ketone body metabolism, focusing on the needs of the brain in prolonged fasting conditions. This literary composition highlights the use of ketone bodies as an important metabolic adaptation that avoids excessive protein degradation and allows for greater survival. The liver produces ketone bodies that…

In this article, we describe an in-house polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific priming (PCR-SSP) assay designed for undergraduate medical students as part of the experimental pathogen biology and immunology (EPBI) course. It screens human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR2 allotype from genomic DNA samples using a rapid and single-tube PCR…

Hippocampal dopamine D1/D5 receptor-dependent destabilization is necessary for object recognition memory (ORM) updating through reconsolidation. Dopamine also regulates hippocampal theta and gamma oscillations, which are involved in novelty and memory processing. We found that, in adult male rats, ORM recall in the presence of a novel object, but…