Conducting remote activities to teach students about enzyme kinetics

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged teachers around the world to embrace distance learning. In theory-centric, lecture-based courses, adapting existing materials was relatively easy, but teaching laboratory classes remotely was a daunting task.

In a new paper, researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering show the implementation of remote activities to teach students about enzyme kinetics.

An important challenge for online learning is the provision of hands-on lab course work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have consumables reagent To provide a lab experience for students in remote areas. We want to help students practice their skills and perform experiments remotely, using protocols that do not require the large and expensive equipment normally accessible in our educational labs. I did... “

Karin Jensen, Teaching Assistant Professor, Biotechnology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Karl R. Wars Institute for Genomic Biology

Previously, researchers were developing remote exercises to teach students how to use a micropipette with a household kit. Currently, they are focusing on how to teach undergraduates about enzyme kinetics, which examines the rate at which enzymes break down their targets to form products. To that end, the team has developed a home-based enzyme kinetics kit that can be used as an alternative to traditional laboratory techniques.

“Other instructors have developed lab kits in the past, but none have focused on teaching enzyme kinetics, which is usually required to accurately measure the products of enzymatic reactions. It’s especially difficult given the special equipment that is used, “says Pablo Perez-Pinera (ACPP). , Associate Professor of Bioengineering. “We taught students how to perform simple experiments and quickly collect data to study enzyme kinetics, using very basic and affordable equipment.”

Students were studying how the enzyme lactase converts lactose to glucose. The kit included a micropipette. Scales; lactose; lactase pills; and glucose meters. A few weeks before the exercise, the students were trained remotely to use a micropipette and were instructed to record the data in an electronic lab notebook. After seeing a pre-recorded lecture on enzymes, they were given instructions on how to perform the experiment.

Eileen Johnson, a teaching assistant for graduate students in biotechnology who taught the Remote Labs section, engages students by creating friendly competition for students to design and carry out their experiments. I did.

After meeting with the instructor and learning the basics of the experiment, students were asked to investigate how different perturbations changed the dynamics of the reaction. Do you want to change the result? After introducing such variables, the students met with the instructor and presented the results.

“Some students reported that the Enzyme Kinetics Lab was one of the favorite parts of the course,” said an undergraduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, leading a course lab assistant who developed and optimized the protocol. Abhishek Bhattacharjee says. “Our main limitation was the small number of students who provided feedback. Our future work will include an additional formal evaluation of student feedback.”

The need for such a home kit will continue long after the pandemic. For example, students who are unable to attend a face-to-face lab, who are attending a summer camp, or who participate in an online program may need the opportunity to study in a remote lab. Researchers hope that similar lab activities will help increase access to STEM education.