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Digital World Biology News September 2018
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Welcome to September!
We've been updating our website these past few weeks. Never fear, you'll still be able to find BLAST for beginners and FinchTV, along with our community resources. If you have any problems finding anything, please contact us.
September topics
- Drug discovery and rare disease
- Bioinformatics instructors course
- Biochemicals structure collection
- Playing macromolecules card games with Biochemi™ cards
- Back to school sale
- October: Look for the Digital World Biology booth at the WSTA conference in Bellingham, WA
- November: We'll be at NABT in booth 303 with AC2 Bio-Link & Bio-Link. Dr. Porter will be giving talks on Bio-Link, Biotech-Careers.org, and on looking at mutations in molecular models.
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Drug discovery and rare disease
I've written before about ways we can use low-cost bioinformatics resources like blastp and Molecule World to identify drugs that might bind to proteins other than their intended target. The New York Times had an article last week on repurposing drugs for another goal–treating rare disease, that I think could be addressed using the same technique. If you're interested, here are some references:
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Bioinformatics Instructor Course
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Seeing macromolecules in September
My favorite kinds of activities are those that allow students to successfully work on their own to investigate something, gather data, draw conclusions, and test their conclusions by applying what they've learned to a new situation or data set.
We recently expanded the Biochemicals Structure Collection and added a worksheet (Investigating Biochemicals) to provide more guidance and make it straightforward for students to use the collection. The worksheet and collection help students investigate the structure and elements in common macromolecules by working with molecular models obtained from the NCBI.
To use the collection, students download the Biochemicals Structure collection and open it in the Molecule World iPad app. They look at the different kinds of macromolecules, assign them to groups, and use the color key to identify the kinds of atoms that each type of macromolecule contains. They also calculate the ratio of carbon to oxygen for fatty acids and carbohydrates.
They will find that fatty acids and carbohydrates contain carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, with fatty acids containing a higher ratio of carbon to oxygen. They'll find that nucleic acids and proteins contain additional elements such as phosphorus (nucleotides and nucleic acids) and sulfur (amino acids and proteins).
We also added some unlabeled structures to the collection. These can be used for assessment. Students use the general rules they uncover by looking at the other structures to identify the unknowns.
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Biochemi™ cards with a few number cards, face cards, and a stack of cards turned over to show the back of the deck.
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Playing macromolecules card games with Biochemi™ cards
Molecular modeling is lots of fun, but I know from experience that students also learn quite a bit by talking to each other and having to say words out loud. Every time they have to say a name like "nucleotide" or "fatty acid," the meaning of that name is reinforced and their neural pathways for remembering that name become stronger. If the process of learning those names is associated with a pleasurable experience, like playing a fun game with classmates, it's even better.
So, we've decided to experiment a bit with making card games for learning about macromolecules and other concepts in bioinformatics and molecular biology. In the last newsletter, I described playing Go Fish with amino acids (Amino Fish) and lots of games with Amino Rummy. Now, we've created a new card deck (Biochemi™) that can help students learn how to identify macromolecules while playing card games they already know.
Biochemi cards replace the standard four suits (diamonds, hearts, spades, clubs) with suits of macromolecules (fatty acids, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and peptides). This allows us to play any card game with Biochemi cards. We just have to remember the names of the macromolecules. Instead of playing a two of hearts, for example, we would play a two of carbohydrates (or a two of carbs, a disaccharide).
Learn how to shoot the moon with Biochemi Cards
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Now is a great time to play cards.
Get 20% off on Biochemi cards or anything else in our Etsy shop.
Offer code: BACKTOSCHOOL
Offer valid through September 30, 2018.
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Where can you find us in 2018?
Oct 19-20th WSTA, Bellingham, WA
Nov 7-11th NABT, San Diego, CA
We hope to see you there!
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