A Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in Biochemistry II Lecture

Abstract

Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) aim to involve all undergraduate students in a course in an authentic research question. CUREs increase the number of students exposed to research and provide students an opportunity to apply concepts. While many CUREs have been used in laboratory classes, I developed and implemented a CURE on iron uptake in insects in a second semester biochemistry lecture course. Students used common database and bioinformatics tools to explore an assigned Drosophila melanogaster gene and its expression data and found related protein sequences in other insects. After making a multiple sequence alignment, students used the alignment and a related crystal structure to identify key amino acid residues and make predictions about protein structure and function. The project culminated in a formal memo to a research collaborator, who gave students feedback about how their findings fit in the larger project. In the second half of the semester students expanded on skills developed in the CURE to explore the sequence and structure of a protein of interest. From five semesters of iteration I share strategies for incorporating research and bioinformatics into a lecture classroom environment. Student feedback using a modified CURE assessment survey indicates recent versions of the project had student self‐reported scores on discovery and iteration comparable to laboratory‐based CURE projects.Support or Funding InformationNSF IOS‐1656407