Student Design of a Proteopedia Page to Reinforce Foundational Biochemistry Concepts and Molecular Visualization Skills

In our curriculum, we have implemented a variety of strategies to promote mastery of ASBMB core concepts in biochemistry, and more recently of molecular visualization skills. For the past two years we have utilized student design of a Proteopedia page in our Biochemistry course as a way to gain proficiency in both of these areas. Working in small groups, students are assigned a journal article that characterizes the function of a protein. Each article contains one or more solved protein structures along with a variety of other biochemical data. A series of scaffolded assignments lead the students through an overview of the article, more in‐depth analysis of the protein’s function, individual design of a draft Proteopedia page, and a final revision of that page. Using the Jmol tools in Proteopedia and the original PDB file, students construct and annotate novel images to highlight key points of the article. They identify critical molecular interactions, explore topology and connectivity, generate alternate renderings, and emphasize relationships between molecular structure and function. As students complete these activities, they are accessing, comprehending and communicating science topics. After completing their Proteopedia pages, students report a better understanding of foundational concepts and molecular visualization. They also appreciate this visually‐based project, rather than a written or oral analysis of the journal article. The Proteopedia project also helps the students see the relevance of their growing biochemistry knowledge to both current literature and to solving real‐world problems.