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Enzyme Kinetics: How Quickly Can Acetylcholinesterase Break Up Your Thoughts?

Author(s): Hannah Pie1, Michelle Starz-Gaiano2

1. Howard County Community College 2. University of Maryland Baltimore County

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Summary:
This module contains exercises designed to help upper-level cell biology students understand the common graphical methods used to evaluate enzyme activity and to see the impact of inhibitors on this activity.

Licensed under CC Attribution 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 23 Aug 2023 doi:10.25334/32BW-2020 - cite this

Contents:

Description

This module is designed to help students strengthen skills in quantitative reasoning using mathematical models of biological systems presented in graphs.  The activities provide review on the enzymatic function of acetylcholinesterase and the impact of different types of inhibitors on its activity.  Students identify linear and non-linear relationships between substrate concentration and initial reaction velocities of enzyme-mediated reactions, compare strategies for graphing the data, calculate the Michaelis constant (Km) and maximum velocity (Vmax) for the reactions, and examine the impact of these kinetics by different inhibitors.  They then need to make biological predictions about inhibitor type given the datasets.  Pre-work is provided to prepare students for the generation, use and interpretation of linear and non-linear graphs and regression equations.

This module has been implemented as part of the NEXUS Institute for Quantitative Biology (NIQB), Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Project, which is a collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and community college partners, including Howard Community College and Montgomery College.  This module is designed for students to work in small teams to process and analyze from a dataset, using software such as Excel or Google Sheets.

Attached files:

  • NIQB Cell Biology - ENZYME KINETICS MODULE-8-22-no-assessment.docx
  • NIQB Cell Biology - Enzyme Kinetics dataset for module.xlsx
  • NIQB Cell Biology - Enzyme kinetics module student pre-work.docx
  • NIQB Cell Biology - Enzyme Kinetics Module - studentversion-2-23.docx

This module was developed and implemented as part of the NEXUS Institute for Quantitative Biology (NIQB), which is a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation's Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (NSF-IUSE) initiative. NIQB is a collaboration between University of Maryland, Baltimore County (DUE-1821274), Anne Arundel Community College (DUE-1821179), Community College of Baltimore County (DUE-1821249), Howard Community College (DUE-1820903), and Montgomery College (DUE-1821169).

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