Education
Course content: Borrow, adapt or create?
Creating your own content is invigorating, and best done with some careful deliberation and planning, including scripting and choreography. However, detailed planning may not be a luxury you have at this time, and if you are unfamiliar with content creation, this could be quite a hill to climb. Therefore, this team recommends those unfamiliar with creating content to outsource your content at first, so you can spend time planning interactive assignments and working on your course assessments. There are wonderful resources and talks from experts available online, and we have aggregated links that you can use from resources you can lean on, including the ASBMB. Did you find a video on a topic you need to teach, but it contains an error? Use this as a teaching tool. Your LMS will have a way for you to provide a description of the resource, and you can give students the timestamp and explain the error.
For those familiar with content creation, be sure to create small bites of content based on the learning objectives that you have already streamlined. Think about the multiple topics that you would cover in a standard lecture period and create content for those topics separately. Consider how you will ensure that students are working through this material in a timely manner (i.e. quizzes and/or homework assignments with specific deadlines). There will be a fine balance between flexibility, especially for students with slower technology or limited access, and making sure that students are making progress.
Most LMSs have limited space for uploaded content; however, YouTube is an excellent way to deliver videos to your students. When you upload, there will be an option for your video to be unlisted. This means that only individuals with the link can view it, and you can provide this link to your students through the LMS without it being able to be viewed publicly.
Resources
Advanced biochemistry
- PyMol
- PyMol visualization software - Free for educational use; can be combined with tutorials to create a lab module; examples
- PyMOL Playlist tutorials - Active site in minutes, scenes, labels, movies, builder
- PyMol Tutorial - Creating scene-based movies
- PyMol Tutorial - Advanced movies with morphing
- PyMol Tutorial - Advanced analysis - Ligand binding site analysis, distance measurments, mutagenesis, dihedral angle changes
- PyMol Tutorial - Aligning structures and calculating Poisson-Boltman electrostatics
- H++ site to predict pKa of residue and surrounding residues in molecule (pdb file)
- Server to complete energy minimization of a pdb file
- Molprobity server to access quality of pdb file - Among a lot of information, show students a Ramachandran plot of evaluated pdb file
- PHYRE (Protein Homology/analogY Recognition Engine) Server to create homology model from a protein sequence
- Swissdock server to dock molecules, molecular interactions
- Chimera - Advanced interactive molecular visualization and modelling software
- ResearchGate - Links to papers, authors and expertise
- IUBMB - The international BMB organization offers articles for free download on nomenclature and research
- Khan academy biomolecules
- Text resources - Vital source is a group of publishers sharing e-texts, only good this term; Cengage and Wiley
- The Journal of Biological Chemistry - All in-press articles are free
- New England BioLabs video library - Includes seminars and methods
- eLife video seminars
- CRISPR-Cas gene editing teaching resource - Includes the science, technology, and application of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, with free videos, open-access articles, and visuals
- Interview with Dr. Erik Procko - How the COVID-19 spike protein binds its ACE2 receptor and possible therapeutic and diagnotic uses; corresponding preprint is linked in the video description
Biochemistry
- Oxidative Phosphorylation music video
- Electron Transport Chain video - From Harvard's free online course, “Cell Biology: Mitochondria"
- ATP synthase video - From Harvard's free online course, “Cell Biology: Mitochondria"
- Inner life of the cell - Great wrap up video for macromolecules.
- Enzyme/coenzyme mechanisms playlist
- iBiology Research Talks - Includes talks covering a range of topics
- Principles of biochemistry - A student resource if they feel they need to supplement course content.
- Playlist of cell biology animations
- NCBI - Literature, databases, free full text articles through PubMed Central
- Forsdyke Evolution Academy: Introns and Exons - Includes historical context
- Bio-Rad webinars - Collection of webinars, including "Discover Real Time PCR for the Classroom"
- Voet, Voet, and Pratt Fundamentals of Biochemistry - Links to many videos on chapter topics
Biochemistry nonmajors
- Free biochem textbook iPad, Kindle, pdf download, by Ahern, Rajagopal and Tan
- Biochemistry for Pre-Meds - Online course lectures by Ahern at Oregon State University, free download (iTunes only)
Entertaining biochemistry
- The infamous "Molecular Happening" video of 1971 - Stanford students dancing out central dogma
- Ahern's metabolic melodies
- PCR rap video
- Jim Allison: Breakthrough - A documentary featuring the life and research of 2018 Nobel Prize winner Jim Allison; sign up for a free educational license
Chemistry
- Chemistry and COVID-19 resource list
- Marvin sketch chem drawing tool
- Intro chemistry - Short YouTube videos by faculty
- The Connected Chemistry Curriculum - A community that posts resources, simulations.
- Chem 101 - Offering zero cost resources for faculty and students in the face of the pandemic (gen chem 1 and 2 homework, extra practice problems, and quizes).
- Green chemistry - Free courses and resources including Green Chemistry, Toxicology, Chirality, etc.
Structural Biology
- Protein Structure Animation created with PyMOL
- DNA Structure Animation created with PyMOL
- Protein Data Bank - Protein structures, PDB-101, articles, videos, coloring books
- Bioinformatics Resource Portal - Includes links to proteomics tools, swissmodel, swissdock and others
Case studies and activities
- Case studies in biochemistry of medical conditions - Does not include solutions
- Literature with example
- Wide variety of science case studies - Register as faculty to receive solutions etc.
- BAMBEd journal - Five-module series from sequence alignments to virtual docking using COX-I. See the Supplementary Materials.
- pGLO transformation and inquiry kit - A case study relating bacterial transformation and stopping the spread of a disease-causing agent
General
- BioInteractive - Short lectures, animals, and videos on a range of topics
- Merlot - Curation of course content for many different disciplines. Also has online support communities.
- Features on Nobel Laureates
- Molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology resources - Presentations and activities for workshops and teaching from Bio-Rad
