The prevalence of 15 common obesity-related chronic health conditions was examined in a convenience sample of adolescents, ages 12-18 years old, with mobility and non-mobility limitations (n=208 and 435, respectively). In both groups, overweight adolescents (BMI[greater than or equal to] 85th %ile) had a significantly higher number of…

Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in adults with major depressive disorder is among the most consistent and robust biological findings in psychiatry. Given the importance of the adolescent transition to the development and recurrence of depressive phenomena over the lifespan, it is important to have an integrative…

Scientific literacy is an important goal for science education, especially within controversial socioscientific issues. In this study, we analysed 143 students' research reports about stem cell research (SCR) for how they addressed specific source evaluation criteria provided within the assignment. We investigated students' opinions about SCR, how…

Lantibiotics are bacterial-derived polycyclic antimicrobial peptides. They are genetically encoded and ribosomally synthesized as precursor peptides containing a structural region that undergoes post-translational modification and a leader sequence that is not modified. Specific serine and threonine residues in the pre-lantibiotic structural…

Compared with age-matched male mice, female mice experience a more severe age-related cognitive decline (ACD). Since androgens are less abundant in aged female mice compared with aged male mice, androgen supplementation may enhance cognition in aged female mice. To test this, we assessed behavioral performance on a variety of tasks in 22- to…

The King-Altman method of deriving rate equations for enzymatic reactions is applied to the derivation of the Michaelis-Menten equation, along with an explanation for how (or why) the King-Altman method works in this case. The slightly more complicated cases of competitive inhibition and a two-substrate enzyme-catalyzed reaction are then treated…

Students often have trouble understanding key biology ideas because they lack an understanding of foundational chemistry ideas. AAAS Project 2061 is collaborating with BSCS in the development a curriculum unit that connects core chemistry and biochemistry ideas in order to help eighth grade students build the conceptual foundation needed for high…

The impact of 3 different sources of stress--environmental, familial (e.g., low parental investment), and interpersonal (i.e., racial discrimination)--on the life history strategies (LHS) and associated cognitions of African American adolescents were examined over an 11-year period (5 waves, from age 10.5 to 21.5). Analyses indicated that each one…

Enzyme function is central to student understanding of multiple topics within the biochemistry curriculum. In particular, students must understand how enzymes and substrates interact with one another. This manuscript describes the development of a 15-item Enzyme-Substrate Interactions Concept Inventory (ESICI) that measures student understanding…

Purpose: To explore the relationship between degree of rurality and glucose (hemoglobin A1c), blood pressure (BP), and lipid (LDL) control among patients with diabetes. Methods: Descriptive study; 1,649 patients in 205 rural practices in the United States. Patients' residence ZIP codes defined degree of rurality (Rural-Urban Commuting Areas…

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…

Wesley College is a private, primarily undergraduate minority-serving institution located in the historic district of Dover, Delaware (DE). The College recently revised its baccalaureate biological chemistry program requirements to include a one-semester Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences course and project-based experiential learning…

When teaching the effect of temperature on biochemical reactions, the problem is usually oversimplified by confining the thermal effect to the catalytic constant, which is identified with the rate constant of the elementary limiting step. Therefore, only positive values for activation energies and values greater than 1 for temperature coefficients…

The capacity for long-term changes in synaptic efficacy can be altered by prior synaptic activity, a process known as "metaplasticity." Activation of receptors for modulatory neurotransmitters can trigger downstream signaling cascades that persist beyond initial receptor activation and may thus have metaplastic effects. Because activation of…

An undergraduate biochemistry laboratory experiment has been developed using biolayer interferometry (BLI), an optical biosensing technique similar to surface plasmon resonance (SPR), in which students obtain and analyze kinetic data for a protein-protein interaction. Optical biosensing is a technique of choice to determine kinetic and affinity…