Description

Research experiences provide a valuable view into the world of science and a great way to explore new fields and careers while developing critical thinking skills. Unfortunately, not all students have access to these kinds of opportunities or even the guidance to develop marketable skills to attain these positions. The development and maintenance of databases have allowed researchers to accelerate research in many fields, and understanding how to use them opens doors to actual data for scientific purposes.

This lesson plan introduces students to the cellular processes behind antigen presentation in human cells that lead to immune cell recruitment while exploring the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). The activities in this lesson can be used in Biology, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Bioinformatics, and Introductory Immunology courses. In addition, this activity includes a Student Activity and Instructor Notes with solutions and extra guidance for educators.

Students will be able to use the IEDB and the extensive amount of data it’s curated to predict cleavage events resulting in the formation of peptides. The student activity will expose them to analysis tools used to study epitopes for immunological research with applications in the fields of vaccine design, antibody, and protein engineering, to name a few. Upon completion of the activities students will be able to:

• Describe the proteasome and its function
• Use the NetChop tool to identify cleavage events resulting in peptides
• Interpret data sets to identify potential peptides in an amino acid sequence

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (DUE 2055036). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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