Elizabeth Vogel Taylor

Creating an interdisciplinary introductory chemistry course without time-intensive curriculum changes.

C utting edge scientific research increasingly occurs at the interface of disciplines, and equipping students to recognize interdisciplinary connections is essential for preparing the next generation of researchers, health workers, and policymakers to solve the toughest scientific problems (1, 2). Accordingly, new recommendations for premedical curricula issued by the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) call for a competency-based training, shifting away from specific course requirements to the ability of students to apply knowledge and recognize underlying scientific principles in medicine (3). Chemical principles underlie all of the life sciences, and while the relevance of chemistry to biological processes is frequently discussed in advanced chemistry courses, this is long after most general chemistry and premedical students have stopped taking chemistry entirely. Introductory chemistry courses therefore provide a unique opportunity to impact a diverse cross section of students (4). Additionally, early exposure to the applications of chemistry may be particularly relevant for the recruitment of underrepresented minorities and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds into the sciences, since research indicates that students from lower economic backgrounds value college majors with clear career applications (5). Some schools have implemented combined introductory chemistry/biology courses, which can offer valuable learning experiences but require ongoing commitments from dedicated faculty members and curriculum flexibility (6, 7). More commonly, schools have rigid curriculum guidelines in general chemistry, which are not amenable to redesigning the course. For example, in colleges that condense general chemistry into a single semester or in high school courses with stateor AP-based syllabi, removing topics from the curriculum to make room for interdisciplinary units is not an option. Ideally, an introductory chemistry course should inspire and equip students to recognize underlying chemical principles in other disciplines and solve interdisciplinary problems without sacrificing the original content in the course. Here we describe the development, implementation, and assessment of succinct examples from biology and medicine that illuminate applications of chemical principles. These examples were incorporated into the lectures and problem sets of the 2007 and 2008 semesters of the general chemistry course 5.111 at MIT, with a yearly fall enrollment of 200 freshman from 19 different intended academic majors, including over 60% women and 25% underrepresented minority students (see Supplementary Table 1). The materials are freely available to other educators and the *Corresponding author, cdrennan@mit.edu.

A research-inspired laboratory sequence investigating acquired drug resistance†

Here, we present a six‐session laboratory exercise designed to introduce students to standard biochemical techniques in the context of investigating a high impact research topic, acquired resistance to the cancer drug Gleevec. Students express a Gleevec‐resistant mutant of the Abelson tyrosine kinase domain, the active domain of an oncogenic protein implicated in chronic myelogenous leukemia, and investigate the kinase activity of wild type and mutant enzyme in the presence of two cancer drugs. Techniques covered include protein expression, purification, and gel analysis, kinase activity assays, and protein structure viewing. The exercises provide students with a hands‐on understanding of the impact of biochemistry on human health, and demonstrate their potential as the next generation of investigators.