Teaching Botany Using Bioinformatics Tools - Creative Education

CE > Vol.10 No.10, October 2019

Teaching Botany Using Bioinformatics Tools ()

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DOI: 10.4236/ce.2019.1010155 498 Downloads 1,778 Views

Author(s)

Xiaorong Zhang

Affiliation(s)

Department of Biology, Savannah State University, Savannah, Georgia, USA.

ABSTRACT

Two laboratory activities are designed to reinforce several important concepts in General Botany course, which is a required course for biology majors at Savannah State University (SSU). The first activity requires students to study the relationship between protein structure and function through observing the 3D structure of Rubisco (ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase and oxygenase)—the enzyme that catalyzes the first step of the Calvin cycle for photosynthesis. This activity also helps students understand the mechanism of enzymatic action through examining the interaction of Rubisco with its cofactor, substrate, competitive inhibitor, and product. The second activity is designed to help students grasp the concept of plant evolution and phylogeny through analyzing the genetic sequences of Rubisco collected from representative species and determining the evolutionary relationships of these species using bioinformatics tools. Through these two laboratory activities, several important topics are linked together, with Rubisco as a common theme, so that students would develop a holistic and coherent view of plant sciences. Furthermore, students would also gain several important bioinformatics skills that they could use and apply in their future studies and careers.

KEYWORDS

Rubisco, Protein Structure and Function, Cn3D, Enzymatic Action, Molecular Phylogenetics, Plant Evolution

Share and Cite:

Zhang, X. (2019) Teaching Botany Using Bioinformatics Tools. Creative Education, 10, 2137-2146. doi: 10.4236/ce.2019.1010155.

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