We have implemented at the University of Málaga (Spain) a new course‐based undergraduate research experience (CURE) to involve undergraduate students of Science in a real‐world scientific problem. Within the topic “Let's find acetylcholinesterase inhibitors as new drug candidates for the treatment of Alzheimer's”, students have been engaged into the early stages of the drug discovery process. Working in groups of 4–5 persons, they have searched information in databases, proposed solutions to the driving question and designed protocols to carry them out in vitro and in silico. Overall, the implementation of this experience has been very satisfactory in terms of academic performance and students' perception. This article reports a session from the virtual international 2021 IUBMB/ASBMB workshop, “Teaching Science on Big Data”.

Metabolism and its regulation is one of the most complex and difficult topics for students learning biochemistry. A problem/case-based learning approach can be useful to help biochemistry students to fulfil the goal of acquiring an integrated view of metabolism and its regulation. The present article describes our experience enrolling volunteer students to learn glycogen metabolism making use of a design-based research methodology to develop teaching learning sequences focused on a problem/case-based learning approach. Enrolled undergraduate students had better final scores than those students that did not participates. Furthermore, enrolled students were satisfied with the experience, finding it interesting, formative, and challenging.

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 years. This traditional and robust laboratory practical has been reformed, in the light of inquiry‐based and interdisciplinary learning approaches, in order to optimize the students' formative achievements that now are not restricted to the learning of enzymology, but also integrates cross‐curricular knowledge from chemistry and mathematics. In this experiment, inexpensive and feasible to be carried out in a single laboratory session, students have to make the decision of what method is the most suitable for a given analytical problem, anticipating situations that they will probably face throughout their professional careers. It not only illustrates basic issues related to the use of enzymes as reagents for enzymatic analyses and its application to food chemistry, but it is also used to put into practice some principles of statistical analysis and analytical methods evaluation. This can be achieved because students get results from two different enzymatic analysis protocols (kinetic and end‐point methods) using a single reaction mixture. The measurement of glucose concentration in four carbonated soft‐drinks, regular or sugar‐free colas and tonic waters makes students deal with the presence of color interferences that should be either avoided or eliminated. Undergraduate students, having performed this experiment, have found it formative, interesting, and challenging. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(3):341–347, 2019.

Although there are many laboratory experiments available to illustrate spectrophotometric or fluorometric methods, few of them introduce the use of luminometry to students. Bioluminiscence, a subtype of chemiluminescence, is produced when an enzyme-catalyzed chemical reaction gives rise to a light emission. Despite the advantages of bioluminescent methods, including sensitivity and specificity, and their increasing use in experimental sciences and biomedical laboratories, their presence in our classrooms are almost inexistent. The luciferase-catalyzed enzymatic reaction has generated a myriad of practical applications, including those derived from the measurement of the ATP consumed in the reaction. In particular, the measurement of the ATP levels in drinking or stored waters directly correlates with their bacteria content, facilitating the development of rapid methods for detecting bacterial contamination. They avoid the long waiting time associated with the traditional microbiological methods, based on the growth of the microorganisms in a suitable culture medium.Throughout the last two years, we have implemented at the University of Malaga a new laboratory experiment for undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry students. In this experiment, students detected bacterial contamination in water by quantifying ATP with the luciferase catalyzed reaction.The experiment was implemented in two different formats, either as a full project developed by students throughout the entire duration of the academic course, or as a shorter version that could be carried out in a single laboratory session. Its application to our classrooms has been very satisfactory, as evidenced by the good academic performance and positive students' perception.

We are currently involved in an Educative Innovation Project (PIE17-145, funded by the University of Malaga) aimed to improve the teaching practice of Metabolism to undergraduate students. We are designing and developing new metabolism cases of problem-based learning (PBL) applied to different groups of Biochemistry and Biology undergraduate students. In the academic course 2017-18, we implemented a first trial for a PBL case on glycogen and its metabolism that was offered as an optional evaluable task for students of two courses devoted to metabolic regulation, both corresponding to the second year of the Degrees in Biology and Biochemistry. Metabolism, its regulation and its integration is one of the most complex study subjects for Biochemistry students. In fact, its learning is perceived as a demanding and difficult task by undergraduate science students, and only few of them achieve an integrated and deep learning of the subject. In END 2018, we presented a communication describing how PBL can be used as a motivating didactic strategy for the study of fundamental topics in biochemistry. In the present communication to END 2019, we will show the impact of a specific PBL case on the performance and final scores of the students enrolled in the afore-mentioned courses.