In brief
- A summer course aims to give high school, undergraduate, and graduate students without prior biology knowledge the tools to assess bioscience developments in the news.
- The course teaches the fundamentals of cellular and molecular biology along with scientific literacy – interpreting data and testing falsifiable claims.
- For their final project, students produce a podcast episode explaining the biology behind a timely topic such as mRNA vaccines, antimicrobial resistance, or Ozempic.
This summer, many of the 27 students walked into the first class of BIO15S without significant biology training but they all exited with a foundational understanding of the field, especially as it relates to today’s headlines. That’s the hope of the instructor, David Armenta, PhD ’22, who designed the class and is teaching it for the second summer in a row.
Make no mistake – this is not a journalism course. Biology in the News primarily drills down on the nitty-gritty fundamentals of cellular and molecular biology. But Armenta’s innovative approach to this course seeks to make the science as relevant for the students’ lives as possible, now and in the future.
“As biology becomes an increasingly important part of the news cycle, the idea of the course is to teach the basic biology you need to understand everything in the headlines, and what isn’t in the headlines yet,” said Armenta, who is a lecturer in the Department of Biology in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “If you don’t understand molecular biology, mRNA vaccines may sound scarier than they are, for example. I hope to equip students with the tools necessary to learn about future developments.”
In addition to short assignments based on the topic for each week, students dig into two larger projects. Halfway through the course, groups of students teach the rest of the class about one of six assigned biology themes that appear in the news, demonstrating they can apply what they’ve learned. For the final project, these same groups create a podcast episode about new subtopics within the same six themes.
Fun with the fundamentals
Armenta, who conducted cancer metabolism research in the H&S lab of Scott Dixon while earning his PhD in biology and has also taught in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program, kicks off the course with lessons on interpreting data and critically evaluating logical and scientific arguments. He considers it to be perhaps the most valuable discussion of the two months.
One of the primary goals is for students to learn how to sift through the many claims that crop up in the news and on social media, and find the ones that are scientific at their core.
“Science can’t answer philosophical questions like, ‘What is the meaning of life?’” Armenta explained. “But science is a good tool for answering specific and – more importantly, falsifiable – claims.”
As Armenta explains, science can address questions where the answer can be found through experimental observation, like “Why is the sky blue?” or “What causes the flu?” But it can’t end subjective debates like, “Are dogs or cats cuter?” (However, a more concrete version of that question – What percent of students in BIO15S think dogs are cuter than cats? – could be settled through a social science study.)
Once these basic limitations of scientific claims are established, the next few weeks of the course center around fundamental biology. Students are taught about the cell and learn what is known as the “central dogma of molecular biology”: genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to protein, and none of these things can be understood in isolation.
“Proteins are the machines of life,” Armenta said. “Proteins are the way that cells do all the business that they need to do. If you actually understand the central dogma in molecular detail, it’s my belief that you can derive answers to a wide array of new biology topics.”
Science can’t answer philosophical questions like, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ But science is a good tool for answering specific and – more importantly, falsifiable – claims.
David ArmentaPhD ’22
These classes lay the foundation for the students’ exploration of additional project topics. These include AquAdvantage salmon and other genetically modified food, COVID vaccines (and mRNA vaccines more generally), CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, antimicrobial resistance, and immunotherapy and novel cancer treatments.
Armenta also covers cell signaling, or how a cell transmits information from one part of the cell to another. The sixth project topic, Ozempic – the increasingly popular diet drug that mimics hormones – can be explained through cell signaling.
Final projects
The students wrap up the course by producing a podcast episode, which unpacks the biology underlying topics of their choice. For his students – which in summer courses can include high school, undergraduate, and graduate students – Armenta hopes these final projects can enhance learning through the practice of teaching others.
Incoming first-year student and women’s basketball player Alexandra Eschmeyer is part of the group that studied immunotherapy. “I’ve loved the collaborative environment and working in groups,” said Eschmeyer, who hasn’t declared a major but might want to go to medical school one day. “I also think there’s been a really great balance between lectures on basic biology and getting the time to explore our own passions.”
The teaching assistant for this summer’s class, biology master’s student Gurmenjit Kaur Bahia, said she enjoys how this course differs from others in biology, which typically focus on the scientific mechanisms alone.
“The most interesting part of the class is that it’s giving students not only the biology, but also a biological toolkit that they’ll use for their entire lives,” Bahia said. “We’re not aiming to give students these terms to memorize but instead teaching general biology that they can apply every time they read about a new medical treatment or new environmental or health policy.”
For more information
Dixon is an associate professor of biology in H&S.