A semester-long, project-based series of laboratory exercises is described that provides practical experience of the upstream and downstream processes involved in monoclonal antibody production. This 6 week project is aimed at final year undergraduate students undertaking primary degrees in biotechnology, biochemistry, or related disciplines.…

Students in one discipline often receive their scientific training from faculty in other disciplines. As a result of tacit disciplinary differences, especially as implemented in courses at the introductory college level, such students can have difficulty in understanding the nature of the knowledge they are learning in a discipline that they do…

This study was conducted to evaluate an education program based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) for salt intake in individuals at risk of hypertension. This randomized controlled trial was conducted from February 2017 to December 2017 in Shahediyeh, Yazd Province, Iran. For this purpose, 140 people were selected and assigned to two groups…

Faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at the University of New England (UNE) have recently transformed introductory and advanced chemistry curricula by embedding the high impact practice of undergraduate research. Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have provided experiential learning opportunities for over 272…

Drug design and development requires collaboration among scientists with diverse expertise. In early-stage drug design, establishment of promising drug candidates requires integration of structure-based molecular design with biopharmaceutics and ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity) principles. Much of this work is…

With biochemistry forced to transition to remote-teaching online, the cooperative active learning and problem-solving normally in labs have been limited. With little ability to perform experiments with laboratory equipment, determining how to mimic the qualities integral to these labs in an online environment is necessary. We propose one possible…

Purpose: The ability to perform motor imagery (MI) might be impaired by the physical fatigue elicited during training. Interestingly, there is also theoretical support for a more limited influence of fatigue in the existing literature. Method: We evaluated MI ability before and after two exercise protocols: (i) a continuous exercise of 20 min…

Closing the university due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sudden shift from independent research projects in biochemistry to a virtual learning experience focused on essential research skills and an added community outreach activity. Here, pedagogical strategies and lessons learned on restructuring this upper-level biochemistry laboratory…

The commercialization of virtual reality (VR) hardware has enabled the use of VR as an educational tool. We describe how a VR platform was used to create molecular visualizations using standard PDB files with the purpose of delivering biochemistry and cellular biology lessons for undergraduates. Specifically, we describe two new software modules,…

This article describes a simple exercise using a free, easy-to-use, established online program. The exercise helps to reinforce protein purification concepts and introduces undergraduates to pH as a parameter that affects anion-exchange chromatography. The exercise was tested with biochemistry majors at California State University-Chico. Given the…

A set of biochemistry experiments based on the technique of protein colorimetry is described. Students used the Biuret and Bradford assays to qualitatively and quantitatively assess solutions for protein. Two unique features of these experiments are (1) the use of intentional discrepancies within each experiment to promote critical thinking and…

There is a growing movement to involve undergraduate students in authentic research experiences. A variety of studies have indicated the strength of this approach in developing scientific aptitude, confidence, critical thinking skills, and increasing the likelihood to become career scientists. Course-based undergraduate research experiences…

The evolutionarily conserved Elongator Complex associates with RNA polymerase II for transcriptional elongation. Elp3 is the catalytic subunit, contains histone acetyltransferase activity, and is associated with neurodegeneration in humans. Elp1 is a scaffolding subunit and when mutated causes familial dysautonomia. Here, we show that…

The formation of mate recognition memory in mice is associated with neural changes at the reciprocal dendrodendritic synapses between glutamatergic mitral cell (MC) projection neurons and GABAergic granule cell (GC) interneurons in the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). Although noradrenaline (NA) plays a critical role in the formation of the memory,…

An experiment for the upper-division undergraduate biochemistry laboratory is described in which students investigate the influence of genetic variations of cytochrome P450 1A2 on drug metabolism, using caffeine as a model compound. Saliva samples from human subjects are characterized for a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the CYP1A2 gene…