A student in Dr. Todd Barkman's molecular biology lab conducts research as part of the course.
KALAMAZOO, Mich.—Reading textbooks. Taking notes. Pop quizzes. Research papers. An experiment or two.
Those are often the first, and only, things that come to mind when you imagine a college biology course. However, this is not what happens in Dr. Todd Barkman's molecular biology lab.
“I wanted to bring together the techniques of doing science (in the classroom) and at the same time answering a scientific question that hasn’t necessarily been studied before,” says Barkman, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Western Michigan University.
As a result of such efforts to embed innovative research into a standard college course, more than 50 students, primarily undergraduates, were credited as authors in a March 2022 publication in the academic journal Molecular Biology and Evolution titled “A Collaborative Classroom Investigation of the Evolution of SABATH Methyltransferase Substrate Preference Shifts over 120 My of Flowering Plant History.”
From concept to classroom
The molecular biology lab course didn’t always provide students with an authentic research experience. It wasn’t until 2012, after being approved for a National Science Foundation grant, that Barkman was able to implement his vision to move beyond “cookbook” labs.
“In my research lab, one or two students per year would get research experience. I wanted to deliver a research experience to as many people as possible,” says Barkman. “Training people on how to do science and what science is—this is really important.”
What used to be one or two students delving into the complete research experience quickly shifted into dozens of students plunging into scientific research each spring semester to answer one big question: how does plant metabolism evolve?
For seven years, students collected data by selecting a plant, often from the Biological Sciences Finch Greenhouse on campus, and meticulously learning and applying various scientific techniques to ultimately test what the protein from each plant does. Plants included in the study ranged from sunflowers to supermarket carrots.
“Although (each student) has individual projects and plans, they’re all working to collect data that will work together,” says Barkman. “They all do every single (scientific) technique, but this breaks down for people at various stages because we don’t know what the results are going to be, and sometimes the correct but disappointing result is ‘no data.’”
The data collection method for the lab begins with picking a plant, extracting the required genes into tubes and inserting the genes into bacteria in a petri dish to drive the bacteria to produce proteins from the gene in order to research what the gene does.
From plants to publication
As a real-world research experience, students didn’t just complete the actual experiments. At the end of the semester, with all the data they cataloged in their lab notebooks, students would craft a paper that detailed their findings.
Seven years into the program, Barkman and graduate student Nicole Dubs synthesized and further evaluated the lab notebooks of 54 students to develop the paper that was eventually published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
“Students got to experience the entire publication process. Students were really involved from inception all the way to the complete publication,” says Barkman. He also noted that the vast amount of data collected would not have been possible without the contribution of each student in the class over the years.
Although this classroom research effort was ultimately successful in providing new and publishable insights into plant proteins, Barkman believes that even if that weren't the case, the classroom research model would still be valuable because students "come in not having much (scientific research) experience and they walk away being people I would be pleased to have on my research team."
“The students truly generated data that was completely surprising to me and we never predicted we were going to see,” says Barkman. “As we sit on the last day of the class holding our breath while waiting for the data to come out of this instrument, you’d see this peak (in the data) that proves that novel scientific data have been attained. Students would jump up and down hugging. That’s what it is all about.”
As for what is next, Barkman says his class is now working on an entirely new “big question.” And thanks to the support they receive from various departments across campus, Barkman will continue to be able to provide a critical research experience for students that they can carry into their professional careers.
This story is published as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Annual Magazine—view the 2022 Magazine online.