My Notes
Categories
This literature discussion was created for my 300-level elective course in bioinorganic chemistry. Over the course of the semester, we read a series of 3 papers from Sarah L.J. Michel's lab at the University of Maryland's School of Pharmacy. This paper, "Pb(II) Coordination to the Nonclassical Zinc Fiinger Tristetraprolin: Retained Function with an Altered Fold" (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00775-022-01980-1) was the second one we examined. I used it as part of our section on toxic metal ions and as way to introduce and discuss techniques like circular dichroism, 2D NMR, and EXAFS.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Assignment Document for Students | 20.81 KB |
The learning goals for this assignment were to:
- Introduce students to biochemical and bioinorganic techniques
- Examine the impact of a toxic metal binding to a protein
- Introduce students to the chemical literature
I gave students this assignment and had them turn in the questions as homework. On the day it was due, we had a class discussion where we went over the answers to the questions. I provided supplemental information about the various techniques used in the paper as needed. In this particular year, I had 36 students in the class (an all time high), and it still worked well for generating discussion. The class was a mix of junior and senior undergraduate students, most of whom were either chemistry majors, chemistry minors, or biochemistry majors.
Evaluation
I graded the homework, giving students 80% of the points on each question for effort and the remaining 20% for how correct their answer was. This seemed to work well.
Students commented that the paper was easy to understand, and most students were able to answer the questions correctly.