Integrating research into the classroom environment is an influential pedagogical tool to support student learning, increase retention of STEM students, and help students identify as scientists. The ...evolution of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) has grown from individual faculty incorporating their research in the teaching laboratory into well-supported systems to sustain faculty engagement in CUREs. To support the growth of protein-centric biochemistry-related CUREs, we cultivated a community of enthusiastic faculty to develop and adopt malate dehydrogenase (MDH) as a CURE focal point. The MDH CURE Community has grown into a vibrant and exciting group of over 28 faculty from various institutions, including community colleges, minority-serving institutions, undergraduate institutions, and research-intensive institutions in just 4 years. This collective has also addressed important pedagogical questions on the impact of CURE collaboration and the length of the CURE experience in community colleges, undergraduate institutions, and research-intensive institutions. This work provided evidence that modular or partial-semester CUREs also support student outcomes, especially the positive impact it had on underrepresented students. We are currently focused on expanding the MDH CURE Community network by generating more teaching and research materials, creating regional hubs for local interaction and increasing mentoring capacity, and offering mentoring and professional development opportunities for new faculty adopters.
Undergraduate research is an important experience that increases retention, ownership, and learning. Integrating research experiences into the classroom is the focus of course-based undergraduate ...research education (CUREs) and has become an important tool in curricula of many universities. This article will serve as a guide for those interested in starting a CURE. Information on the makeup of CUREs and a suggested workflow to design a CURE for chemistry disciplines is described. Examples of recent chemistry focused CURE examples and an introduction to supported CURE networks are described to help orient faculty interested in advancing their work as well as creating CUREs at large institutions and curricula that scaffolds CUREs at several levels.
Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are laboratory courses that integrate broadly relevant problems, discovery, use of the scientific process, collaboration, and iteration to ...provide more students with research experiences than is possible in individually mentored faculty laboratories. Members of the national Malate dehydrogenase CUREs Community (MCC) investigated the differences in student impacts between traditional laboratory courses (control), a short module CURE within traditional laboratory courses (mCURE), and CUREs lasting the entire course (cCURE). The sample included approximately 1,500 students taught by 22 faculty at 19 institutions. We investigated course structures for elements of a CURE and student outcomes including student knowledge, student learning, student attitudes, interest in future research, overall experience, future GPA, and retention in STEM. We also disaggregated the data to investigate whether underrepresented minority (URM) outcomes were different from White and Asian students. We found that the less time students spent in the CURE the less the course was reported to contain experiences indicative of a CURE. The cCURE imparted the largest impacts for experimental design, career interests, and plans to conduct future research, while the remaining outcomes were similar between the three conditions. The mCURE student outcomes were similar to control courses for most outcomes measured in this study. However, for experimental design, the mCURE was not significantly different than either the control or cCURE. Comparing URM and White/Asian student outcomes indicated no difference for condition, except for interest in future research. Notably, the URM students in the mCURE condition had significantly higher interest in conducting research in the future than White/Asian students.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
4.
It is all about the students Provost, Joseph J.
Biochemistry and molecular biology education,
May/June 2022, Letnik:
50, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Accreditation of academic programs and recognition of student degrees provide academic institutions a measure of a set of community agreed upon standards. These can aid pedagogical change, support ...faculty to successfully engage students in their discipline and to provide a mechanism to maintain standards. Several professional scientific societies from engineering, chemistry, and biochemistry and molecular biology have developed standards by which departments can be recognized for accreditation. As one of the members of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology who helped develop the accreditation and standardized exams and a committee member of the American Chemical Society's Committee on Professional Training I will present the evolution of the accreditation process, discuss the benefits and challenges with being an accreditation. How these programs serve their communities and at times can hinder or be used to support potential creativity and teaching pedagogies will also be discussed.
The implementation of Course‐Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) has made it possible to expose large undergraduate populations to research experiences. For these research experiences to ...be authentic, they should reflect the increasing collaborative nature of research. While some CUREs have expanded with multiple schools across the nation, it is still unclear how a structured extramural collaboration between students and faculty from an outside institution affects student outcomes. In this study, we established three cohorts of students: 1) no‐CURE 2) single institution CURE (CURE) and 3) external collaborative CURE (ec‐CURE) and assessed academic and attitudinal outcomes. The ec‐CURE differs from a regular CURE in that students work with faculty member from an external institution to refine their hypothesis and discuss their data. The sharing of ideas, data and materials with an external faculty allowed students to experience a level of collaboration not typically found in an undergraduate setting. Students in the ec‐CURE had the greatest gains in experimental design, self‐reported course benefits, scientific skills and STEM importance. Importantly this study occurred in a diverse community of STEM disciplinary faculty from 2‐ and 4‐year institutions illustrating that exposing students to structured external collaboration is both feasible and beneficial to student learning.
Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have emerged as a well supported high‐impact practice for improving both retention of students in science, technology, engineering, and ...mathematics (STEM) disciplines and overall achievement of students in STEM coursework. While considerable scholarship has been performed on the overall efficacy of CUREs as a teaching approach, comparatively little work has been done to uncover the more nuanced data on how CUREs serve students at different types of undergraduate institutions (community colleges, primarily‐undergraduate institutions (PUIs), and research‐intensive institutions) as well as students characterized as Persons Excluded due to Ethnicity or Race (PEER). In this study, we leverage the Malate Dehydrogenase CURE Community, a CURE network focused on bringing research experiences in protein biochemistry to undergraduates, to collect data on student achievement and attitudes. Using several validated assessment instruments, we considered how effective the MCC CURE experience was at each type of institution as well as for PEER students versus their White/Asian counterparts. Our data revealed that the CURE approach to instruction was especially effective at PUIs, with significantly‐higher levels of student collaboration and overall positive attitudes about STEM careers found in comparison to community colleges and research‐intensive institutions. Community colleges reported the most significant gains with respect to PEER student achievement relative to White/Asian students as well as enthusiasm among PEER students for conducting future research. Taken together, the data suggest that while all undergraduates may expect to benefit from exposure to CUREs, the specific benefits vary by the type of institution as well as the PEER status of student. The outcomes of this research will ultimately enable institutions to provide biochemistry‐focused high‐impact educational experiences for undergraduates tailored to the needs of these institutions to enable them to become a well‐equipped next generation of life scientists.
Determine the effect of palmitoylation on the sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform 1 (NHE1), a member of the SLC9 family.
NHE1 expressed in native rat tissues or in heterologous cells was assessed for ...palmitoylation by acyl-biotinyl exchange (ABE) and metabolic labeling with 3Hpalmitate. Cellular palmitoylation was inhibited using 2-bromopalmitate (2BP) followed by determination of NHE1 palmitoylation status, intracellular pH, stress fiber formation, and cell migration. In addition, NHE1 was activated with LPA treatment followed by determination of NHE1 palmitoylation status and LPA-induced change in intracellular pH was determined in the presence and absence of preincubation with 2BP.
In this study we demonstrate for the first time that NHE1 is palmitoylated in both cells and rat tissue, and that processes controlled by NHE1 including intracellular pH (pHi), stress fiber formation, and cell migration, are regulated in concert with NHE1 palmitoylation status. Importantly, LPA stimulates NHE1 palmitoylation, and 2BP pretreatment dampens LPA-induced increased pHi which is dependent on the presence of NHE1.
Palmitoylation is a reversible lipid modification that regulates an array of critical protein functions including activity, trafficking, membrane microlocalization and protein-protein interactions. Our results suggest that palmitoylation of NHE1 and other control/signaling proteins play a major role in NHE1 regulation that could significantly impact multiple critical cellular functions.
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The sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform one is a critical regulator of intracellular pH, serves as an anchor for the formation of cytoplasmic signaling complexes, and modulates cytoskeletal ...organization. There is a growing interest in the potential for sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform one as a therapeutic target against cancer. Sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform one transport drives formation of membrane protrusions essential for cell migration and contributes to the establishment of a tumor microenvironment that leads to the rearrangement of the extracellular matrix further supporting tumor progression. Here, we focus on the potential impact that an inexpensive, $100 genome would have in identifying prospective therapeutic targets to treat tumors based upon changes in gene expression and variation of sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform one regulators. In particular, we will focus on the ezrin, radixin, moesin family proteins, calcineurin B homologous proteins, Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling, and phosphoinositide signaling as they relate to the regulation of sodium hydrogen exchanger isoform one in cancer progression.
NHE1 is important for the invasion and migration behavior of cells. Regulation of this transporter is reviewed with potential impact on genomic therapy.
Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) offer an inclusive means to engage students in the scientific process and enhance student learning gains and persistence in STEM. To realize ...the benefits of CURE implementation, is there a minimum length of CURE? We studied the learning and attitudinal outcomes of more than 1,000 undergraduate students across the United States involved in chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology CUREs using malate dehydrogenase as the model system. There were three conditions, complete semester CURE (cCURE), modular CURE of about six weeks in length embedded into a laboratory course (mCURE), and no CURE (control). We also looked at the impact these conditions had on students who are persons excluded from STEM due to ethnicity or race (PEER). We hypothesized that the longer the students spent in a CURE the better their outcomes. We measured student outcomes using several validated measures and compared the conditions using ANOVA, ANCOVA, and chi‐square analyses. We found cCURE students had higher experimental design learning and STEM support than control students. We found cCURE>mCURE>control for student’s report of their interest in conducting research in the future, support for STEM students, and their interest in a STEM career. Students in the cCURE and control had higher positive attitudes about scientific research than students in the mCURE. There were no differences between conditions for negative attitudes towards science, science literacy, and beliefs about learning science. We found PEER students reporting the same results as White/Asian students, except for their interest in conducting research: PEER students in mCUREs had higher interest than their White/Asian counterparts in conducting research. We conclude that the overall pattern was for students in the cCURE condition to have better learning and attitudinal outcomes than students in the mCURE and control conditions. Additionally, PEER student outcomes in CURE conditions were similar to their White/Asian counterparts. These results should encourage faculty to use CUREs in laboratory courses to improve all students’ outcomes and indicate that even a short CURE embedded within a traditional laboratory course can benefit students.
