The Exciting Journey of A Metabolite ‐ A Visual Online Lesson on Metabolic Flux for Undergraduates

Abstract

Metabolism tends to be a challenging and discouraging topic in biochemistry for undergraduate students, but understanding metabolic pathways and their misregulation has become increasingly important. With input from educators, we have used advanced animation and graphics tools to build a visually engaging online lesson on the fundamental concept of metabolic flux. The lesson consists of five short modules that initially introduce the student to individual metabolic pathways, and also provide an overall view of all the central carbon metabolism pathways together so they intuitively understand the interconnectedness. The later modules reveal how flow of metabolites through those pathways change under different conditions such as high altitude or diseases such as cancer, and also briefly explains how metabolic flux is measured experimentally by tracing isotopes of elements specifically carbon. This lesson contains instruction on use for educators and provides example cases that can be used for group discussions after every module. The individual modules can be integrated with regular undergraduate biochemistry instruction at different points in the curriculum. We believe this visualization will help illustrate the critical interplay between catabolism and anabolism, and develop in students thinking at a systems level to better understand metabolic regulation and the dynamic nature of flux. We hope to assess these outcomes in classrooms in the Fall of 2021.