Integrating Undergraduate Molecular Biology and Biochemistry: the Development of a Program Capstone Laboratory Based on Authentic Research

The Departments of Chemistry and Biology at Mercer University jointly oversee the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology degree. Recently, the program underwent a review and subsequent reorganization. As a part of these changes, a new capstone laboratory was developed to integrate techniques from traditional molecular biology and biochemistry labs into a single, semester‐long project that provides an authentic research experience for all majors. Students design primers for site‐directed mutatgenesis to introduce a single amino acid change for an enzyme of interest. Students gain experience with PCR, cloning, DNA purification, and sequence analysis. Following confirmation of their mutation, students express the wild‐type and mutated enzymes as a 6xHis‐tagged fusion proteins which they purify and characterize using a paranitrophenol‐linked substrate. Enzyme activity of the mutated protein is compared to that of the wild‐type enzyme. In addition to meeting the traditional objectives for a biochemistry laboratory, students receive the added benefit of exposure to a semester‐long research project with clear experimental connections between techniques.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.