Enzymes provide attractive targets for drug development. Quantitative analysis of enzyme reactions can lead to rational drug discovery. For undergraduates majoring in biochemistry or pharmacy and engaged in drug discovery-related work, it is essential to acquire a comprehensive understanding of enzyme kinetics, including experimental methods and…

Failing test scores in reading proficiency have been a blemish on our nation's report card for decades as scores have remained static despite the readily-available information on language and literacy attainment, and the employment of research-based strategies in classrooms. While we continue our quest to efficiently bolster reading skills, a less…

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…

Mass spectrometry is essential for large-scale protein identification in proteomics. By database searching of mass spectrometry data, it is possible to identify proteins without the need to interpret MS/MS spectra (de novo sequencing), which is time-consuming and not feasible as a systematic tool in proteomic analysis. Many authors have reported…

We are living in the Big Data era, and yet we may have serious troubles when dealing with a handful of kinetic data if we are not properly instructed. The aim of this paper, related to enzyme kinetics, is to illustrate how to determine the K[subscript m] and V[subscript max] of a michaelian enzyme avoiding the pitfalls in which we often fall. To…

While we have been looking for alternative educational materials for our undergraduate students, we found ourselves in COVID-19 pandemic and had to think postgraduate education. On the first day of restrictions, our major problem was to learn and find the best communication tool. The first experiences for online meetings were boring, we were not…

Virtual labs have proven to be very versatile and valuable for providing realistic experience for students in STE (Science, Technology, and Engineering) fields. As we progress from delivery of instructional material from classroom to the Internet, there is need to develop laboratory exercises to supplement the theoretical lessons. A Web-based…

Strong evidence supports a role for protein degradation in fear memory formation. However, these data have been largely done in only male animals. Here, we found that following contextual fear conditioning, females, but not males, had increased levels of proteasome activity and K48 polyubiquitin protein targeting in the dorsal hippocampus, the…

Advances in physiology and other fields are strongly associated with a solid base knowledge of biochemistry and cell metabolism. On the other hand, the complex and abstract nature of metabolic pathways, the traditional lecture method, and other factors made the teaching-learning process of biochemistry a challenging endeavor. To overcome this, we…

Although many laboratory experiments are available to illustrate spectrophotometric or fluorometric methods, few of them introduce the use of luminometry to students. Bioluminescence, a subtype of chemiluminescence, is produced when an enzyme-catalyzed chemical reaction gives rise to light emission. Despite the advantages of bioluminescent…