Development and Evaluation of Amino Acid Molecular Models

• Main Author: Silva, Aparecido R.
• Publication Date: 2007
• Other Authors: Beltramini, Leila M.
• Format: Article
• Language: por
• Source: Revista de Ensino de Bioquímica
• Download full: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/86
• topic: amino acids; didactic; structure

The comprehension of structure and function of proteins has a tight relationshipwith the development of structural biology. However, biochemistry students usuallyfind difficulty to visualize the structures when they use only schematic drawings ofdidactic books. The representation of three-dimensional structures of somebiomolecules with ludic models, built with representative units, have supplied tothe students and teachers a successfully experience to better visualize andcorrelate the structures to the real molecules. The present work shows thedeveloped models and the process to produce the representative units of the mainamino acids in industrial scale. The design and applicability of the representativeunits were discussed with many teachers and some suggestions wereimplemented to the models. The preliminary evaluation and perspective ofutilization by researchers show that the work is in the right direction. At the actualstage, the models are defined, prototypes were made and will be presented in thismeeting. The moulds for the units are at the final stage of construction and trial inspecialized tool facilities. The last term will consist of an effective evaluation of thedidactic tool for the teaching/learning process in Structural Molecular Biology. Theevaluation protocol is being elaborated containing simple and objective questions,similar to those used in research on science teaching.