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…

Plant metabolite compounds have been applied on plant cellular metabolism, produces organic and inorganic compounds, primary and secondary bioactive molecules, such as glucose, amino acids, fat acids, alkaloids, flavonoids, and terpenoids. Undergraduate biology students learn about the plant terpenoid assisted by bioinformatics to store, manage,…

An effective, practical approach for incorporating molecular biology tools to biology and biochemistry students is described. For 6 weeks, students are exposed to bacterial transformation, plasmid DNA purification and analysis, parasite transfection, ectopic expression of fluorescent proteins, fluorescence microscopy, and flow cytometry analysis.…

While undergraduate research has been shown to be a high-impact educational practice, it is logistically impossible for all undergraduate biology majors to have long-term faculty-mentored research experience. Therefore, biology educators and researchers must devise opportunities to engage more students in undergraduate research outside of working…

Existing research has investigated student problem-solving strategies across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; however, there is limited work in undergraduate biology education on how various aspects that influence learning combine to generate holistic approaches to problem solving. Through the lens of situated cognition, we…

Critical thinking is essential in academia and the workforce. Although writing can be used as a pedagogical tool for fostering deeper subject matter understanding, increased retention, and critical thinking, relatively few science courses are writing based. This writing-based introductory science course provided an opportunity for students to…

A scientific conceptual understanding of photosynthesis and respiration provides an important basis for understanding nature and the regulations of life. Photosynthesis and respiration are complex processes, and learning about them requires a proper understanding of their various aspects, from molecular biology to the ecosystem level. This study…

Views of obesity as a consequence of "lack of willpower" or other behavioral choices, rather than a complex array of biological and other factors, are quite common among undergraduate students. Many undergraduates in prenursing or biology programs have little exposure to the physiology and pathophysiology of obesity, including learning…

Abstract Microbiome study requires both molecular techniques and bioinformatics skills, which are challenging for biologists to participate in this growing field. To introduce microbiome concepts and skills to students, a 6-week wet-lab and bioinformatics course for undergraduates was implemented through the project-based learning (PBL) approach.…

Visual literacy, which is the ability to effectively identify, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media, is an important aspect of science literacy. As molecular processes are not directly observable, researchers and educators rely on visual representations (e.g., drawings) to communicate ideas in biology. How learners…

The National Center for Biotechnology Information Entrez Direct (EDirect) software facilitates programmatic access to numerous biomedical, chemical, and literature databases from within a Unix terminal. EDirect has traditionally been used for command line access to NCBI data within the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. This…

We describe a novel, university-level, introductory biology course that uses evolution as a narrative framework. Our course conveys the content in an introductory biology course by telling the story of the evolution of life on Earth. We begin with early Earth environments in which biological molecules and processes evolved and led to the first…

We developed an advanced, year-long course sequence in eukaryotic cell and molecular biology in order to increase conceptual understanding. Three years of historical data from a one semester, traditional-lecture, senior cell and molecular biology course (n = 237) were compared with 3 years of data collected from the year-long course sequence (n =…

The process of meiosis is an essential topic that secondary and postsecondary students struggle with. The important meiosis-related concepts of homology, ploidy, and segregation can be described using the DNA Triangle framework, which connects them to the multidimensional nature of DNA (chromosomal, molecular, and informational levels). We have…

Effectively teaching scientific reasoning requires an understanding of the challenges students face when learning these skills. We designed an assessment that measures undergraduate student abilities to form hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret data from experiments in cellular and molecular biology. The assessment uses…