Dr. Muth has been developing this course since the Spring of 2003 using cystathionine-beta lyase as the enzyme of interest.  He feels that the laboratory curriculum could be adapted to study almost any enzyme that has been cloned into an expression vector.

A recent update was presented at the "Interdisciplinary Science Education: Institutional Examples, Lessons Learned and Challenges" conference at the Midstates Consortium for Mathematics and Science sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust.

A Research-Style Biochemistry Lab: Collaborating on the Integration of Research and Teaching at Two Institutions

Week 1            Design: Introduction, Overview and Chemical Mechanism of CBL (overview)

Week 2            Design: Molecular Modeling and Mutant Design (Pre-lab 1 due, overview)

Week 3            DNA: PCR, ligation and transformation (Pre-lab 2 due)

Week 4            DNA: Plasmid isolation analysis (Pre-lab 3 due, Analysis assignment 1 due)

Week 5            DNA: Sequencing (Pre-lab 4 due, Analysis assignment 2 due)

Week 6            Protein: Isolation and purification (Pre-lab 5 due)

Week 7*            Protein: Concentration determination (Pre-lab 6 due, Analysis assignment 3 due)

Week 8            No Lab

Week 9*            Protein: Molecular weight and structure analysis (Pre-lab 7 due, Analysis assignment 4 due)

Week 10            Protein: CBL kinetic assay optimization (Pre-lab 8 due, Analysis assignment 5 due, overview)

Week 11          CBL kinetics  (Pre-lab 9 due) 

Week 12          CBL kinetics (Analysis assignment 6 due)

Week 13          CBL kinetics

Week 14            Presentations

*could be combined and completed in a single week

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