You and Your Oral Microflora: Introducing non-biology majors to their “forgotten organ”

Abstract

With limited time available for laboratory activities, introductory science courses for non-science majors typically use the laboratory period to reinforce material that was previously presented during lecture. This practice was true of a human biology course at the University of Minnesota, in which most lab activities centered on organ dissections. To break from this mold, we designed a new laboratory module to introduce students to their “forgotten organ”, the human microbiome. We chose this topic partly due to the explosion of recent research in this area, as well as the opportunity to expose students to online tools and techniques. Student motivation arose from the opportunity to determine the types of microbes that might be growing inside their mouth, and piqued their interest in how microbes could positively affect their health. Through a series of activities, a group of students from a large-enrollment course sampled and analyzed a subset of their oral microflora.  Using the NCBI BLAST tool, they were able to tentatively identify microbial sequences amplified using primers specific for 16S rRNA. The activities greatly expanded on topics covered only briefly in lecture and provided hands-on experience with scientific techniques. This module could be adapted to fit into a number of different formats. It has been used in an introductory biology course as a multi-week activity, and as a two-day activity with high school biology teachers. It could also be modified to be an in silico activity, with instructors guiding students to public databases to obtain sequence data.