After a time away from the classrooms and laboratories due to the global pandemic, the return to teaching activities during the semester represented a challenge to both teachers and students. Our particular situation in a Microbial Physiology course was the necessity of imparting in shorter time, laboratory practices that usually take longer. This…

An increase in online science course offerings requires a closer evaluation of the online laboratory experience. While it has been established that students can successfully learn from online laboratory simulations, there is a lack of knowledge regarding factors that impact student success. Grounded in the constructivist learning theory, a unique…

Rhizobacteria that colonize plant roots and promote plant growth are referred to as plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, and this can stimulate plant growth either indirectly or directly. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by rhizobacteria have the capacity to promote plant growth as well as perform biocontrol of fungal pathogens. The…

"Sinorhizobium meliloti" is a bacterium of great agroeconomic importance because of its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in symbiotic association with alfalfa ("Medicago sativa") roots, and it is often used in model studies. We investigated the effects of exopolysaccharides (EPSs) in cell-to-cell and cell-to-surface…

A six-laboratory session biofilm-focused biochemistry laboratory module is described. Through just six four-hour laboratory sessions over three weeks, students first master background knowledge and fundamental experimental techniques to explore questions involving bacterial biofilms at the interface of microbiology and biochemistry and then…

The convenient synthesis of dihydroberberine by the reduction of berberine is described as an experiment for an upper-division undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course. Students obtained up to 74% yield of the desired pure product without the use of chromatographic techniques. The antimicrobial activities of both compounds against…

The MicRoboCop project introduces chemistry students to the concepts and protocols of synthetic biology. MicRoboCop is a biosensor that has been designed for unique applications in forensic chemistry. The lab is carried out in collaboration with an instructor teaching a genetics course. Students in the biology course synthesize biosensors using…

We describe a 2 h introductory laboratory procedure that prepares a novel magnetic antimicrobial activated carbon nanocomposite in which nanoscale sized magnetite and silver particles are incorporated (MACAg). The MACAg nanocomposite has achieved the synergistic properties derived from its components and demonstrated its applicability as an…

Food spoilage has an enormous economic impact, and microbial food spoilage plays a significant role in food waste and loss; subsequently, an equally significant portion of undergraduate food microbiology instruction should be dedicated to spoilage microbiology. Here, we describe a set of undergraduate microbiology laboratory exercises that focus…

This work describes a 10-week laboratory project studying wild-type and mutant bacterial alkaline phosphatase, in which students purify, quantitate, and perform kinetic assays on wild-type and selected mutants of the enzyme. Students also perform plasmid DNA purification, digestion, and gel analysis. In addition to simply learning important…

Biochemistry courses in the Department of Molecular Biology at the National University of Río Cuarto, Argentina, are designed for undergraduate students in biology, microbiology, chemistry, agronomy, and veterinary medicine. Microbiology students typically have previous coursework in general, analytical, and organic chemistry. Programmed sequences…

In this paper, we investigate an approach to supporting students' learning in science through a combination of physical experimentation and virtual modeling. We present a study that utilizes a scientific inquiry framework, which we call "bifocal modeling," to link student-designed experiments and computer models in real time. In this…

Mutate is a program developed for teaching purposes to impart a virtual laboratory class for undergraduate students of Genetics in Biology. The program emulates the so-called fluctuation test whose aim is to distinguish between spontaneous and adaptive mutation hypotheses in bacteria. The plan is to train students in certain key multidisciplinary…

As part of a multidisciplinary course that is cross-listed between five departments, we developed an undergraduate student laboratory experiment for culturing, isolating, and purifying the biopolymer, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), PHB. This biopolyester accumulates in the cytoplasm of bacterial cells under specific growth conditions, and it has…

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS or simply MALDI) has become ubiquitous in the identification and analysis of biomacromolecules. As a technique that allows for the molecular weight determination of otherwise nonvolatile molecules, MALDI has had a profound impact in the molecular…