RME/AGEE a computer tool for restriction enzyme mapping training

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I have just been looking over the Departmental storeroom of once-loved equipment. The occasion was to see whether particular pieces should be spared the ignominy of being dumped into an enormous bin to be carted away. It looks like being a confrontation with no survivors. Our arcanely named furniture store' is a large room at the gloomiest extremity of our basement level, but it is now needed for experimental lab accommodation after 40 years of quietly accumulating junk. This need for more space comes after 30% of second year teaching laboratory space was recently rebuilt into research laboratories for a new research group. I have seen other institutions also make the same sacrifice of extensive teaching space which had been allocated in the days of bucket biochemistry'. In Australia we are in the paradoxical position of having ever more students study biochemistry, but at a decreasing per capita funding level. Our own Department has increased from 250 second year students in 1989 to over 400 in 1996. This might simplistically indicate a lesser standard of laboratory teaching, but I do not believe that to be the case. Our students are being prepared for laboratories with computer controlled automated equipment in which much of the data analysis will also be automated. Those who lament the passing of the Warburg manometers from the store to the bin also know in their hearts that the skills needed to use that old equipment are not relevant to contemporary laboratories. The new skills are not only different, but possibly better taught using computers. Our university Chemistry Department has studied the consequences of moving to experimental simulations as 50% of scheduled practical time for their large first year classes. They were astonished that video tapes of their conventional practical classes were analysed to show that students spent only 10% of their time on task, the rest of the time was spent largely in talking. The new model called for an even division of time between wet laboratories and computer simulations with theoretical background. The chemistry results are that students now understand what they are doing in the laboratory when they get there and spend the majority of their time on task. This a win for everyone, particularly since wet-lab demonstrator costs have been halved from their unsus