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Abstract Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) can be a very effective means to introduce a large number of students to research. CUREs are often an extension of the instructor's research, which may make them difficult to replicate in other settings because of differences in expertise or facilities. The BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab) CURE has evolved over the past 4 years as faculty members with different backgrounds, facilities, and campus cultures have all contributed to a robust curriculum focusing on enzyme function prediction that is suitable for implementation in a wide variety of academic settings. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(5):498–505, 2019.
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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2026
The BASIL CURE Initiative: Transforming How Students Learn Biochemistry Through Real Research
Teaching students how to think like scientists is a critical but challenging goal in biochemistry education. The Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) initiative was conceived by Dr Paul Craig from the Rochester Institute of Technology and is led by colleagues across multiple institutions. They have developed an innovative curriculum that transforms traditional cookbook-style laboratory courses into authentic research experiences, also known as a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE). By investigating real proteins with unknown functions, students learn essential scientific skills while expanding our knowledge of protein biochemistry.
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- PAR ID:
- 10592047
- Publisher / Repository:
- Scientia Global
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Scientia
- ISSN:
- 2059-898X
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Biochemistry education
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Most undergraduates studying biochemistry and molecular biology get their broadest exposure to wet-lab techniques in protein and nucleic acid chemistry (and, increasingly, computer/visualization) in their upper-level laboratory courses. These tend to be juniors and seniors with well-defined career goals. Some of these students will have already have a research background in a traditional one-to-one (or one-to-few) research mentoring setting, for example a summer research program. This approach has proved effective at increasing student learning and persistence in the sciences. At the same time, extended full-time PI-directed research is limited in the number of students served, and can even present a barrier. To broaden the impact of teaching through research, many practitioners have adopted a CURE, or Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience, approach.This presentation reports on “BASIL” (Biochemical Authentic Scientific Inquiry Laboratory), a team of faculty who have worked to bring computational and wet-lab protein science to the biochemistry teaching lab. Together, we have developed a protein biochemistry CURE to determine enzymatic function of proteins of unknown activity. This work leverages the results of the Protein Structure Initiative, a fifteen-year NIH-funded effort which concluded in 2015 with the publication and distribution of more than 5000 previously uncharacterized proteins. The great majority of these are “orphans,” with high quality structures and pre-cloned expression plasmids available, but no research on their enzymatic function or role in native organisms. The BASIL consortium of undergraduate biochemistry faculty and students seeks to identify functional properties of a subset of these uncharacterized proteins, seeking to unify structure and function relationships. Currently, implementable modules are available for faculty who wish to adopt them, and expected student results will be presented.Support or Funding InformationSupported by NSF IUSE 1709278This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.more » « less
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Students at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Dowling College used bioinformatics software, which they had helped develop, to predict the function of protein structures whose functions had not been assigned or confirmed. Over the course of time, they incorporated other bioinformatics tools and moved the project to the wet lab, where they sought to confirm their in silico predictions with in vitro assays. In this process, we saw so much personal and professional growth among our students that we chose to implement their approach in an undergraduate biochemistry teaching lab, which we call BASIL, for Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab. This curriculum has now been implemented by thirteen faculty members on eight campuses, and we look forward to a long-range exploration of BASIL’s impact on the students who enroll in courses that use the BASIL curriculum.more » « less
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