Virtual laboratories have started to be the leading alternative teaching tools during the COVID-19 pandemic process. The "Acid-Base" subject is among those that form the foundations of biochemistry. Students can learn the "Acid-Base" subject in a secure environment, with remote access through the use of virtual laboratory…

Universities play an important role in society and in providing solutions for its problems. Environmental pollution is one of the most serious problems facing the world today. Thus, universities are increasingly including subjects related to the environment and its conservation both in their educational and research programmes. Generally,…

Providing hands-on practical education without access to laboratories during the COVID-19 pandemic has required creativity and innovation. In this paper, co-authored by academic staff and students, we describe an at-home mobile phone-based 'spectrophotometer' experiment used in an introductory undergraduate biology course. Using colour picker…

The first case of coronavirus disease 2019 in Colombia was detected on March 6, 2020. Subsequently, schools, colleges, and universities were closed on March 26, which forced a massive migration to virtual education and impacted laboratory-based teaching courses. The teaching of biochemistry requires an experimental component that virtual…

Student ethnicity is one of the internal factors that influence student learning. Bacteriology is a course that examines prokaryotic unicellular living things and is practiced in laboratories that need to implement projects. The aim of this research is to know the distribution of students based on their ethnicity. The research sample was students…

Although many laboratory experiments are available to illustrate spectrophotometric or fluorometric methods, few of them introduce the use of luminometry to students. Bioluminescence, a subtype of chemiluminescence, is produced when an enzyme-catalyzed chemical reaction gives rise to light emission. Despite the advantages of bioluminescent…

Regulation is a key concept for understanding the dynamics of metabolism in bacteria. This report outlines a simple laboratory experiment aimed at studying a key form of regulation in bacterial metabolism, exemplifying how microbes switch the flux of carbon towards alternative metabolic fates as a function of nutrient availability and according to…

Laboratory course activities often focus on "cookbook style," so their activities have not yet integrated with scientific thinking as an essential aspect. In this research, the laboratory experience of microbial analysis techniques was redesigned using alternative inquiry to involve students in isolating and characterising yeast to make…

Every day we deal with chemistry in various forms, but sometimes we don't see that. An example is biosensors that help us to evaluate health conditions, monitor environmental pollution and ensure food freshness. The most well known (and most widely sold) is the biosensor for blood glucose measurement, used every day by people with diabetes.…

Determination of enzymatic activity is a relevant experiment in teaching chemistry and biochemistry to high school and college students. A method for measuring the kinetic parameters of lactose cleavage by the enzyme lactase is described. This enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of lactose to galactose and glucose. The kinetic parameters can be…

The enzymatic determination of glucose in soft drinks, based on the glucose concentration measurement by means of the coupled reactions of glucose oxidase and peroxidase, has been implemented at the University of Malaga and optimized according to the Biochemistry and Chemistry undergraduate students' results and feedback throughout the last few…

Experimental courses for undergraduate students majoring in biochemistry or related subjects often do not provide students with systematic and research-based experiences. To help students develop abilities related to laboratory techniques, data analysis, and systematic thought in biology, we performed an exploratory program that employs…

Circular dichroism (CD) has emerged as one of the standard biophysical techniques for the study of guaninequadruplex (G4) folding, cation effect, and ligand binding. The utility of this technique is based on its robustness, ease of use, and requirement of only small quantities of nucleic acid. This experiment is also extendable to the classroom…

A laboratory exercise was developed for the study of the effect of three cations (Al, Ca, and Na) on the flocculation and dispersion of soil particles. The exercise was designed for Soil Science undergraduate students in the second-course in the Agricultural Engineering and Environmental Sciences department at the University of Vigo. The students'…

For medical students, we combine the laboratory practice with clinical applications by developing biochemical and molecular biology experiments. In this experiment, students first collect their own buccal epithelial cells by a noninvasive mouthwash method. Then, they extract genomic DNA and perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify…