Development of a Certification Exam to Assess Undergraduate Students' Proficiency in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Core Concepts.

With support from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), a community of biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) scientist-educators has developed and administered an assessment instrument designed to evaluate student competence across four core concept and skill areas fundamental to BMB. The four areas encompass energy and metabolism; information storage and transfer; macromolecular structure, function, and assembly; and skills including analytical and quantitative reasoning. First offered in 2014, the exam has now been administered to nearly 4000 students in ASBMB-accredited programs at more than 70 colleges and universities. Here, we describe the development and continued maturation of the exam program, including the organic role of faculty volunteers as drivers and stewards of all facets: content and format selection, question development, and scoring.

Meeting report: BioMolViz workshops for developing assessments of biomolecular visual literacy.

While molecular visualization has been recognized as a threshold concept in biology education, the explicit assessment of students' visual literacy skills is rare. To facilitate the evaluation of this fundamental ability, a series of NSF-IUSE-sponsored workshops brought together a community of faculty engaged in creating instruments to assess students' biomolecular visualization skills. These efforts expanded our earlier work in which we created a rubric describing overarching themes, learning goals, and learning objectives that address student progress toward biomolecular visual literacy. Here, the BioMolViz Steering Committee (BioMolViz.org) documents the results of those workshops and uses social network analysis to examine the growth of a community of practice. We also share many of the lessons we learned as our workshops evolved, as they may be instructive to other members of the scientific community as they organize workshops of their own.

Assessing stakeholder perceptions of the american society for biochemistry and molecular biology accreditation program for baccalaureate degrees.

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) began an accreditation program in 2013. The criteria for accreditation of undergraduate programs include sufficient infrastructure - number and expertise of faculty, physical space and equipment, support for faculty and students - and incorporation of core concepts in the curriculum - structure and function of biomolecules; information storage; energy transfer; and quantitative skills. Students in accredited programs are able to have their degrees ASBMB certified by taking an exam focused on knowledge or skills across the four core concept areas. Members of the accreditation committees administered a survey to key stakeholders in the BMB community: undergraduate programs, both those that have applied for accreditation and those that have not; alumni/ae of accredited programs; graduate and professional programs; and employers. The goals of the study were to gauge the success of the program and determine necessary areas of improvement. The results indicate that the major benefits of applying for accreditation are the impetus to gather data and analysis not generally collected, and access to assessment data via the exam. However, stakeholders outside of the undergraduate community showed little awareness of the accreditation program. Additionally, the application process itself was seen to be very time consuming. This feedback will be used to improve the process and engage in further outreach. © 2018 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 46(5):464-471, 2018.

An expanded framework for biomolecular visualization in the classroom: Learning goals and competencies.

A thorough understanding of the molecular biosciences requires the ability to visualize and manipulate molecules in order to interpret results or to generate hypotheses. While many instructors in biochemistry and molecular biology use visual representations, few indicate that they explicitly teach visual literacy. One reason is the need for a list of core content and competencies to guide a more deliberate instruction in visual literacy. We offer here the second stage in the development of one such resource for biomolecular three-dimensional visual literacy. We present this work with the goal of building a community for online resource development and use. In the first stage, overarching themes were identified and submitted to the biosciences community for comment: atomic geometry; alternate renderings; construction/annotation; het group recognition; molecular dynamics; molecular interactions; monomer recognition; symmetry/asymmetry recognition; structure-function relationships; structural model skepticism; and topology and connectivity. Herein, the overarching themes have been expanded to include a 12th theme (macromolecular assemblies), 27 learning goals, and more than 200 corresponding objectives, many of which cut across multiple overarching themes. The learning goals and objectives offered here provide educators with a framework on which to map the use of molecular visualization in their classrooms. In addition, the framework may also be used by biochemistry and molecular biology educators to identify gaps in coverage and drive the creation of new activities to improve visual literacy. This work represents the first attempt, to our knowledge, to catalog a comprehensive list of explicit learning goals and objectives in visual literacy. © 2016 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 45(1):69-75, 2017.

Characterisation of protein composition and detection of IgA in cervicovaginal fluid by microchip technology.

In this paper the application of microchip electrophoresis to examine the protein profile of cervicovaginal fluid and the detection of IgA heavy and light chains is presented. This method is a fast growing field of technology and ensures high-speed analysis requiring only microliters of sample. Proteins with wide range of molecular masses could be separated within 1 min. Cervicovaginal specimens of healthy women showed a complex protein pattern-containing several peaks in the 15-70 kDa region. sIgA is considered to be an important protein constituent of all mucosal surfaces. Detection of sIgA in cervicovaginal samples was achievable by microchip technology. Under reduced circumstances (induced by mercaptoethanol, a component of the denaturating solution) the disulfide bonds connecting IgA heavy and light chains are broken up and chains can be detected as separate peaks during electrophoresis. In 82.5% of the cases only the light chain of IgA could be detected in the clinical samples. The intact IgA heavy chain could be demonstrated in only 12.5% of the cases. Based on our data some conclusions were provided about the correlation of these patterns with the age of patients, pH of the cervicovaginal fluid, operations performed before sample collection and usage of oral contraceptives.

Suicide Assessment in Hospital Emergency Departments: Implications for Patient Satisfaction and Compliance.

Suicide is a complex, multidimensional event with a host of contributing factors. Suicidal emergencies are among other behavioral and psychiatric emergencies that provide the basis for emergency department visits. Therefore, emergency departments are ideal clinical environments for the assessment of suicidal patients. A case example from an emergency department visit is provided as a basis of discussion as we describe subpopulations at high risk for suicide and review critical assessment parameters for the recognition and treatment of suicidal patients. Lastly, factors associated with patient satisfaction and treatment compliance are addressed to promote positive health outcomes among suicidal patients.

Paraneoplastic immunobullous disease with an epidermolysis bullosa acquisita phenotype: two cases demonstrating remission with treatment of gynaecological malignancy.

Two cases of paraneoplastic immunobullous disease occurring in women with gynaecological malignancies are reported. Both cases demonstrated mechanobullous mucocutaneous blistering as is typically seen in epidermolysis bullosa acquisita. Their immunopathology, however, favoured a dermal-binding mucous membrane pemphigoid (MMP) (or possibly bullous pemphigoid) for patient 1 and laminin-5 MMP for patient 2. Both patients showed resolution of blistering within 1 year of treatment of their malignancies; uterine and ovarian carcinoma, respectively. These cases are of interest because of their paraneoplastic nature; as well as overlapping clinicoimmunopathological features. In addition, patient 2 is, as far as we are aware, the first report of ovarian-carcinoma-associated laminin-5 MMP.

Circulating basement membrane zone antibodies are found in lichen sclerosus of the vulva.

This study was undertaken to investigate the prevalence of basement membrane zone (BMZ) antibodies, their subtypes and clinical correlations in 96 patients attending the Oxford vulval clinic with lichen sclerosus (LS) of the vulva. Indirect immunofluorescence of serum (intact and split skin) to immunoglobulin (Ig)G was performed looking for the presence or absence of staining at the BMZ. Eighteen patients' sera (14 with positive indirect immunofluorescence to IgG) were examined for IgG antibodies of subclasses IgG1, 2 and 3, and 23 sera were examined for IgG4 subclass. Immunoblotting was performed in seven patients, and showed antibodies to BP180 in six patients and BP230 in one. One-third of patients with vulval LS had BMZ antibodies binding to the epidermal side of salt split skin. Immunoblotting showed antibodies to BP180 collagen XVII (six of seven patients) and BP230 in one. The subclasses were chiefly IgG1 and 2, different from those seen in bullous pemphigoid. No clinical correlation was found between the presence of antibodies and the presence of erosions, severity of scarring, age of onset of disease or response to treatment. These antibodies may be a reflection of a tendency to produce autoantibodies or be relevant to pathogenesis.