Guided inquiry is the practice of allowing students to come to their own conclusions about a set of data instead of verifying a known result using a given experimental procedure. Open inquiry takes this idea one step further by allowing students to develop their own experiment and then analyze the data to arrive at a conclusion. To expose upper…

Due to resource limitations at predominantly undergraduate institutions, research opportunities for non-senior students can be limited. To provide opportunities for a variety of students to gain exposure to research, a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) was designed and conducted. Coupled inquiry was used to allow underclassmen…

Glycoscience continues to be an underrepresented topic in current undergraduate-biochemistry-laboratory curricula. Of the educational laboratories present in this subject area, few introduce students to cutting-edge methods and techniques related to carbohydrates. A multiweek series of experiments is described that highlights a recently published…

Lactase is the enzyme responsible for the digestion of the disaccharide lactose, and deficiency in this enzyme causes the prevalent medical condition lactose intolerance. Management of lactose intolerance can be achieved through the administration of lactase supplements. Lactase is an appropriate platform for advanced enzymatic study because its…

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…

Fluorescence quenching assays are often used to measure dissociation constants that quantify the binding affinity between small molecules and proteins. In an upper-division undergraduate laboratory course, where students work on projects using a guided inquiry-based approach, a binding titration experiment at physiological pH is performed to…

Capillary electrophoresis is an important analytical separation method used to study a wide variety of samples, including those of biological origin. Capillary electrophoresis may be covered in the classroom, especially in advanced analytical courses, and while many students are exposed to gel electrophoresis in biology or biochemistry…

Laboratory courses are often designed using step-by-step protocols which encourage students to conduct experiments without thinking about what they are doing or why they are doing it. Such course design limits the growth of our students as scientists and can make it more difficult for a student to transition to the expectations of a research…

Fluorescent proteins are commonly used in cell biology to assess where proteins are within a cell as a function of time and provide insight into intracellular protein function. However, the usefulness of a fluorescent protein depends directly on the quantum yield. The quantum yield relates the efficiency at which a fluorescent molecule converts…

This inquiry-based experiment is designed for organic or biochemistry undergraduate students to deduce the identity of phospholipids extracted from chicken eggs and dietary supplements. This is achieved using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) data, a series of guided questions of increasing complexity, and provided relative retention factor (Rf)…

Undergraduate biochemistry laboratory courses often do not provide students with an authentic research experience, particularly when the express purpose of the laboratory is purely instructional. However, an instructional laboratory course that is inquiry- and research-based could simultaneously impart scientific knowledge and foster a student's…

Enzyme kinetics measurements are a standard component of undergraduate biochemistry laboratories. The combination of serine hydrolases and fluorogenic enzyme substrates provides a rapid, sensitive, and general method for measuring enzyme kinetics in an undergraduate biochemistry laboratory. In this method, the kinetic activity of multiple protein…

Polymerase chain reaction and restriction endonuclease digest are important techniques that should be included in all Biochemistry and Molecular Biology laboratory curriculums. These techniques are frequently taught at an advanced level, requiring many hours of student and faculty time. Here we present two inquiry-based experiments that are…

Production of liquid fuels such as ethanol from fibrous plant biomass could potentially be a significant sustainable component of the U.S. energy portfolio. Engineers and scientists are actively researching this area, and high school students can engage in this contemporary inquiry process by experimenting with different types of biomass, varying…

Carbohydrate analysis is an excellent way to expose second-year biochemistry majors to the subtlety and nuance of sugar chemistry. In one, 3-h practical period, students must identify an unknown mono- or disaccharide from a collection of three hexoses (glucose, galactose, and mannose), two pentoses (ribose and arabinose), and three disaccharides…