The use of biotin to demonstrate immunohistochemistry, western blotting, and dot blots in university practical classes

Abstract

Immunological detection of proteins is an essential method to demonstrate to undergraduate biology students, however, is often difficult in resource and time poor student laboratory sessions. This method describes a failsafe method to rapidly and economically demonstrate this technique using biotinylated proteins or biotin itself as targets for detection. This negates the need for a specific primary antibody, saving cost and time. In addition, the easily available and safe reagents allow the methods to be readily adopted without specialist technical expertise. As a result, staff can confidently transfer ownership of the task to the student so as to also develop scientific inquiry skills which promotes student motivation and engagement.

Investigating the Effectiveness of an Educational Card Game for Learning How Human Immunology Is Regulated

“…Previous research has revealed that card games can be a useful teaching and learning tool and play an important role in the whole teaching–learning process (Schneider et al ., 2012); however, the target audience in previous studies was often medical students. Moreover, although some of the previous studies have demonstrated that many strategies, such as inquiry-based, problem-based, project-based, or technology-integrated approaches, are beneficial for students to learn immunology or cell biology, they often focus on the impact in the undergraduate or graduate context (Allen and Tanner, 2003; Debard et al ., 2005; Millar et al ., 2012). The conjecture might be that the educational policy in many other countries is different from Taiwan's and that teaching of immunology at the high school level is not common in Western countries.…”

The experimental teaching reform in biochemistry and molecular biology for undergraduate students in Peking University Health Science Center

“…All of the students indicated that the course was beneficial both for building a foundation of knowledge and for acquiring of bench experience and training. Also, we designed open questions for students to get suggestions from them on how to improve the outcome of our course . Typical comments include “Some equipment should be updated,” “Expecting more than just one such project‐oriented course” and “Expecting a more challenging process where we can be involved in the experimental design of solving a scientific problem through literature learning and then practicing it.” Encouraged by the positive feedback from students, we still need to work on solving the essential issues, such as equipment updating and designing more project‐oriented components presented by students.…”

Introducing immunohistochemistry to the molecular biology laboratory

“…IHC staining is a transferable skill that is popularly used in the diagnosis and classification of cancerous tumors, localization of molecular biomarkers, and the identification of a multitude of expressed proteins in biological tissue. Due to its vast applicability to fields such as disease informatics and drug development, IHC is a common research tool in modern protein chemistry and pathology laboratories 2 . Here, we describe an active learning experiment where students engage in immunostaining on mouse brain slices.…”

“…Active learning serves as an effective learning strategy in undergraduate classrooms 4,5 . This teaching lab serves to build upon previous IHC labs that often contain an active learning subtype called collaborative learning 2,6,7 . Collaborative learning is also displayed in this lab by encouraging students to work in small groups to navigate the exercises and communicate findings in an oral presentation.…”

“…Due to its vast applicability to fields such as disease informatics and drug development, IHC is a common research tool in modern protein chemistry and pathology laboratories. 2 Here, we describe an active learning experiment where students engage in immunostaining on mouse brain slices. Active learning encompasses many pedagogies, but we focus on collaborative and inquiry‐based learning in this laboratory experiment.…”