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Biochemical education in leisure
21 (a) 5-OH tryptamine: ~-amino butyrate: acetyl choline: adrenalin: histamine
Biochemical Education in Leisure*
(b) inositol 1,4-bisphosphate: inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate: inositoi 1,3,4,5,-tetrakisphosphate: diacyglycerol: cyclic AMP
Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh-202002 (UP), India
(c) colour blindness: haemophilia: Huntington's chorea: Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Introduction The traditional and general form of teaching in almost all educational institutions is lecturing. The main objective is to prepare graduates who will be able to function as scientists or teachers or investigators. Teachers and learners are the two main components in teaching in which teacher must be an active participant whereas learner may play a passive role. A major drawback may be the lack of active learning by the students. Even after exploiting the use of brain-storming and other techniques, active learning is difficult to achieve. Educational playing cards is one approach where the learners can be encouraged to be active learners whilst playing games. Alternatively, biochemical comic books can be written, based on biochemical stories.
(d) keratin: vimentin: lamin: tubulin: desmin Time Four minutes Answers (a) acetyl choline (not synthesised from amino acid), (b)
inositol 1,4-bisphosphate (not a second messenger), (c) Huntington's chorea (not X-linked recessive), (d) tubulin (makes microtubules, not intermediate filaments) Score Three points per section, if reasons given; otherwise one point Comments Good attempts made by the majority of students
8 'Genetic puzzle' Yeast cell proliferation is inhibited by addition of a protein toxin made by Kluyveromyces lactis to the growth medium. A number of yeast genes which cause resistance to the K lactis toxin have been identified. Below is shown the growth of these strains when they have been transformed with a construct in which the toxin gene is expressed from the galactose-inducible GAL promoter. What single important conclusion can be deduced from these data?
Mutant gene
Growth on G A L A CTOSE
Growth on GLUCOSE
ktil kti2 kti3 kti4 kti6 kti7 kti8
yes no yes no yes no no
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Time 5 minutes Answers and scores There are two types of resistant strain (2 points):
those strains that die when the toxin gene is induced by galactose must normally be resistant because the toxin cannot enter the cells to attack the target; other strains have mutant or missing target (4 points) C o m m e n t Few students made a good attempt at this question
'9 Name the molecule
SAAD TAYYAB
Educational playing cards There are two sets of cards; one showing structures of biomolecules and the other having the corresponding names (see Figure 1). Cards bearing structures are allotted marks and the allotment of marks is based on the complexity of the structure of the biomolecule. A total of 52 cards (showing both structures and names) have been prepared for Amino Acids and Proteins. (Copies of these may be had by writing directly to the author). The other side of all the cards is indistinguishable. How to play: Rules
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
(10) Time one minute A n s w e r and score Tetraiodothyronine, T4 (4 points); Thyroxine (3
points); Thyroid hormone (2 points); a hormone, an amino acid (1 point) Comments No score for those who thought it was a cross-linking reagent!
BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 22(1) 1994
(11)
A maximum of four persons can play. Shuffle the stack of cards before play. Distribute an equal number of cards among all players, except one, who will be given an extra card. Keep the remaining stack aside. Each player has to make correct pairs of a structure and its corresponding name. Now, at this step, the player having an extra card has to throw away one card not of his choice. The next one can either take the same card or pick up one from the stack to make a suitable match. Steps (6) and (7) are repeated unless one has all matched pairs. The game ends when the player having all matched pairs makes a show after throwing away the extra card. Then all other players have to show their cards and the marks of unmatched cards are noted with a negative sign against person's name. Finally, grading will be done according to the total
*This paper was presented at the 6th FAOB Congress held in Shanghai, China, November 16-21, 1992
22 A
i
," ..i.. ~;......
30 r .............
i e c°° I H3N-C-H i.......... L .......
LYSINE
c.2
LY5 K
c.2
3O
|
10
CC-HELIX
I0
Figure 1 Educational playing cards. Left: Structure of amino acid and secondary motif found in proteins. Right: Name of the amino acid (lysine) and a-helix
Figure 2A Separation of molecules by gel filtration. 2B Corresponding cartoon
negative marks after at least three cycles of the game and the person having minimum negative marks will be the winner.
having smallest stature will enter all the rooms of the hall, consequently will be the last to reach their destination. The PRUTO group of intermediate build will see few chambers of the magic hall and thus will be the runnersup. Figure 3A shows one of the secondary structures of proteins, the a-helix. This structure is stabilised by hydrogen bonding between the carbonyl oxygen of the first amino acid residue and the imino hydrogen of the fifth residue. Similarly, the carbonyl oxygen of the second will hydrogen bond with the imino hydrogen of the sixth residue and so on. It may be understood by a cartoon where the first girl is holding the hands of the fifth one (Figure 3B). Enzyme specificity may also be understood in this way. As shown in Figure 4A both hexokinase and glucokinase catalyse phosphorylation of hexoses at the expense of ATP. However, they differ in their specificities: hexokinase can utilise a variety of hexoses such as glucose, fructose and mannose whereas glucokinase can utilise only glucose. Hexokinase has broad specificity whereas glucokinase's specificity is narrow. Figure 4B is selfexplanatory, demonstrating two types of specificity. Many other biochemical stories can be treated in this way.
Biochemical comic books A biochemical comic book can be prepared in such a way that on one side there is a description of a biochemical phenomenon whereas the facing page depicts the "cartoonic" version of the same. This helps the reader (learner) to correlate the two stories at a glance. I have selected few of such biochemical phenomena and explained them through cartoonic illustrations. Figure 2A is an example to keep the learning of a biochemical technique, gel filtration. In gel filtration, the separation of biomolecules takes place on the basis of size. This phenomenon of discrimination of molecules on the basis of size may be illustrated by the cartoonic version shown in Figure 2B. From the figure, it can be seen that if a group of people belonging to different categories on the basis of their build such as BLU, PRUTO and GLUCO have to reach to a particular destination taking a route which passes through a magic hall, then men belonging to the group BLU having a bigger build will be incapable of entering the magic hall and thus will reach the destination first. On the contrary, those belonging to GLUCO family BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 22(1) 1994
23 better performance than group A, when given an unscheduled surprise test leading to the conclusion that students learn more effectively when they are actively engaged and interested.
B
Acknowledgement The author wishes to thank Seema Qamar for helpful discussion.
Stereoscopy Structures
of
Computer-Drawn
Molecular
J C STOCKERT
Department of Biology Faculty of Sciences Autonomous University of Madrid E-28049 Madrid, Spain Figure 3A a-helix and 3 B corresponding cartoon A
GLUCOSE~ ~
~:~3KINASE
/
/
"N
MANNOSE /
ATP
ADP
GLUCOSE
GLt~INASE / "N ATP
-----
D
HEXOSE-6 - PHOSPHATE
,
GLUCOSE- 6 - PHOSFt-tATE
ADP
i"
tll
Introduction With the aid of computers it has become easy to draw molecular structures. Undergraduate or graduate students in biochemical and biological sciences are increasingly confronted with spatial representations of these structures which appear in journals and textbooks. In this respect, the availability of personal computers for educational purposes also offers the possibility to incorporate computer-drawing procedures into practical demonstrations and workshops concerning molecular structures of biochemical interest. Although commonly illustrated as simple two-dimensional schemes, molecules have obviously a three-dimensional structure. Computer-generated stereoscopic pictures (stereopairs) are far superior to any kind of twodimensional or perspective drawing and they can be easily viewed. Unfortunately, many students and teachers are not aware of this and simply disregard stereopairs which they encounter in the biochemical literature. The aim of this communication is to describe a simple method for preparing and viewing stereoscopic pictures of computerdrawn molecules.
Molecular modelling
Figure 4A Reactions catalysed by hexokinase and gtucokinase, and 4B cartoon Conclusion An experiment on these two approaches was carried out on a number of students categorised into two groups. Students of group A were asked to use textbooks whereas of group B were allowed to play the game and read these biochemical comic stories. Group B students showed a
BIOCHEMICAL E D U C A T I O N 22(1) 1994
The Desktop Molecular Modeller program permits a fast and accurate on-screen modelling of chemical structures for teaching and research, requiring an IBM-PC or compatible computer (640 K RAM and mathematic coprocessor). Molecular structures may be visually analyzed, photographed, directly printed from the screen, or exported to other graphics files. Illustrations in this article (obtained with the VGA graphics adapter) were captured using the program Word Perfect version 5.1. Ethanol, D-ribose, and the short DNA segment (dA)12"(dT)~2 were chosen as representative structures showing different levels of complexity. The energyminimization routine was applied for the first two molecules, after which they were duplicated (left and right frames) and separated about 4.5 cm on the screen.
Biochemical Education in Leisure*
(b) inositol 1,4-bisphosphate: inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate: inositoi 1,3,4,5,-tetrakisphosphate: diacyglycerol: cyclic AMP
Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh-202002 (UP), India
(c) colour blindness: haemophilia: Huntington's chorea: Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Introduction The traditional and general form of teaching in almost all educational institutions is lecturing. The main objective is to prepare graduates who will be able to function as scientists or teachers or investigators. Teachers and learners are the two main components in teaching in which teacher must be an active participant whereas learner may play a passive role. A major drawback may be the lack of active learning by the students. Even after exploiting the use of brain-storming and other techniques, active learning is difficult to achieve. Educational playing cards is one approach where the learners can be encouraged to be active learners whilst playing games. Alternatively, biochemical comic books can be written, based on biochemical stories.
(d) keratin: vimentin: lamin: tubulin: desmin Time Four minutes Answers (a) acetyl choline (not synthesised from amino acid), (b)
inositol 1,4-bisphosphate (not a second messenger), (c) Huntington's chorea (not X-linked recessive), (d) tubulin (makes microtubules, not intermediate filaments) Score Three points per section, if reasons given; otherwise one point Comments Good attempts made by the majority of students
8 'Genetic puzzle' Yeast cell proliferation is inhibited by addition of a protein toxin made by Kluyveromyces lactis to the growth medium. A number of yeast genes which cause resistance to the K lactis toxin have been identified. Below is shown the growth of these strains when they have been transformed with a construct in which the toxin gene is expressed from the galactose-inducible GAL promoter. What single important conclusion can be deduced from these data?
Mutant gene
Growth on G A L A CTOSE
Growth on GLUCOSE
ktil kti2 kti3 kti4 kti6 kti7 kti8
yes no yes no yes no no
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Time 5 minutes Answers and scores There are two types of resistant strain (2 points):
those strains that die when the toxin gene is induced by galactose must normally be resistant because the toxin cannot enter the cells to attack the target; other strains have mutant or missing target (4 points) C o m m e n t Few students made a good attempt at this question
'9 Name the molecule
SAAD TAYYAB
Educational playing cards There are two sets of cards; one showing structures of biomolecules and the other having the corresponding names (see Figure 1). Cards bearing structures are allotted marks and the allotment of marks is based on the complexity of the structure of the biomolecule. A total of 52 cards (showing both structures and names) have been prepared for Amino Acids and Proteins. (Copies of these may be had by writing directly to the author). The other side of all the cards is indistinguishable. How to play: Rules
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
(10) Time one minute A n s w e r and score Tetraiodothyronine, T4 (4 points); Thyroxine (3
points); Thyroid hormone (2 points); a hormone, an amino acid (1 point) Comments No score for those who thought it was a cross-linking reagent!
BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 22(1) 1994
(11)
A maximum of four persons can play. Shuffle the stack of cards before play. Distribute an equal number of cards among all players, except one, who will be given an extra card. Keep the remaining stack aside. Each player has to make correct pairs of a structure and its corresponding name. Now, at this step, the player having an extra card has to throw away one card not of his choice. The next one can either take the same card or pick up one from the stack to make a suitable match. Steps (6) and (7) are repeated unless one has all matched pairs. The game ends when the player having all matched pairs makes a show after throwing away the extra card. Then all other players have to show their cards and the marks of unmatched cards are noted with a negative sign against person's name. Finally, grading will be done according to the total
*This paper was presented at the 6th FAOB Congress held in Shanghai, China, November 16-21, 1992
22 A
i
," ..i.. ~;......
30 r .............
i e c°° I H3N-C-H i.......... L .......
LYSINE
c.2
LY5 K
c.2
3O
|
10
CC-HELIX
I0
Figure 1 Educational playing cards. Left: Structure of amino acid and secondary motif found in proteins. Right: Name of the amino acid (lysine) and a-helix
Figure 2A Separation of molecules by gel filtration. 2B Corresponding cartoon
negative marks after at least three cycles of the game and the person having minimum negative marks will be the winner.
having smallest stature will enter all the rooms of the hall, consequently will be the last to reach their destination. The PRUTO group of intermediate build will see few chambers of the magic hall and thus will be the runnersup. Figure 3A shows one of the secondary structures of proteins, the a-helix. This structure is stabilised by hydrogen bonding between the carbonyl oxygen of the first amino acid residue and the imino hydrogen of the fifth residue. Similarly, the carbonyl oxygen of the second will hydrogen bond with the imino hydrogen of the sixth residue and so on. It may be understood by a cartoon where the first girl is holding the hands of the fifth one (Figure 3B). Enzyme specificity may also be understood in this way. As shown in Figure 4A both hexokinase and glucokinase catalyse phosphorylation of hexoses at the expense of ATP. However, they differ in their specificities: hexokinase can utilise a variety of hexoses such as glucose, fructose and mannose whereas glucokinase can utilise only glucose. Hexokinase has broad specificity whereas glucokinase's specificity is narrow. Figure 4B is selfexplanatory, demonstrating two types of specificity. Many other biochemical stories can be treated in this way.
Biochemical comic books A biochemical comic book can be prepared in such a way that on one side there is a description of a biochemical phenomenon whereas the facing page depicts the "cartoonic" version of the same. This helps the reader (learner) to correlate the two stories at a glance. I have selected few of such biochemical phenomena and explained them through cartoonic illustrations. Figure 2A is an example to keep the learning of a biochemical technique, gel filtration. In gel filtration, the separation of biomolecules takes place on the basis of size. This phenomenon of discrimination of molecules on the basis of size may be illustrated by the cartoonic version shown in Figure 2B. From the figure, it can be seen that if a group of people belonging to different categories on the basis of their build such as BLU, PRUTO and GLUCO have to reach to a particular destination taking a route which passes through a magic hall, then men belonging to the group BLU having a bigger build will be incapable of entering the magic hall and thus will reach the destination first. On the contrary, those belonging to GLUCO family BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 22(1) 1994
23 better performance than group A, when given an unscheduled surprise test leading to the conclusion that students learn more effectively when they are actively engaged and interested.
B
Acknowledgement The author wishes to thank Seema Qamar for helpful discussion.
Stereoscopy Structures
of
Computer-Drawn
Molecular
J C STOCKERT
Department of Biology Faculty of Sciences Autonomous University of Madrid E-28049 Madrid, Spain Figure 3A a-helix and 3 B corresponding cartoon A
GLUCOSE~ ~
~:~3KINASE
/
/
"N
MANNOSE /
ATP
ADP
GLUCOSE
GLt~INASE / "N ATP
-----
D
HEXOSE-6 - PHOSPHATE
,
GLUCOSE- 6 - PHOSFt-tATE
ADP
i"
tll
Introduction With the aid of computers it has become easy to draw molecular structures. Undergraduate or graduate students in biochemical and biological sciences are increasingly confronted with spatial representations of these structures which appear in journals and textbooks. In this respect, the availability of personal computers for educational purposes also offers the possibility to incorporate computer-drawing procedures into practical demonstrations and workshops concerning molecular structures of biochemical interest. Although commonly illustrated as simple two-dimensional schemes, molecules have obviously a three-dimensional structure. Computer-generated stereoscopic pictures (stereopairs) are far superior to any kind of twodimensional or perspective drawing and they can be easily viewed. Unfortunately, many students and teachers are not aware of this and simply disregard stereopairs which they encounter in the biochemical literature. The aim of this communication is to describe a simple method for preparing and viewing stereoscopic pictures of computerdrawn molecules.
Molecular modelling
Figure 4A Reactions catalysed by hexokinase and gtucokinase, and 4B cartoon Conclusion An experiment on these two approaches was carried out on a number of students categorised into two groups. Students of group A were asked to use textbooks whereas of group B were allowed to play the game and read these biochemical comic stories. Group B students showed a
BIOCHEMICAL E D U C A T I O N 22(1) 1994
The Desktop Molecular Modeller program permits a fast and accurate on-screen modelling of chemical structures for teaching and research, requiring an IBM-PC or compatible computer (640 K RAM and mathematic coprocessor). Molecular structures may be visually analyzed, photographed, directly printed from the screen, or exported to other graphics files. Illustrations in this article (obtained with the VGA graphics adapter) were captured using the program Word Perfect version 5.1. Ethanol, D-ribose, and the short DNA segment (dA)12"(dT)~2 were chosen as representative structures showing different levels of complexity. The energyminimization routine was applied for the first two molecules, after which they were duplicated (left and right frames) and separated about 4.5 cm on the screen.