Development of a didactic electrophoresis kit for the practical teaching of Molecular Biology in basic and higher education

• Main Authors: César Silva Xavier, Danielle Pereira Cavalcanti
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Bioquímica e Biologia Molecular, SBBq 2017-10-01
• Series: Journal of Biochemistry Education
• Subjects: DNA; biotecnologia na escola; práticas de biologia; ensino de biologia molecular
• Online Access: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/700

The advances in the biotechnology area imposes a new reality, creating products that are present in our daily lives, affecting directly or indirectly the population. Applications related to DNA technologies in the industry, agriculture and medicine have social, ethical and ecological implications, in addition to the human health consequences. So, it is necessary that the public is informed of progress in this area of knowledge. In order to create an alternative method to stimulate students in scientific careers and improve the learning of biotechnology and molecular biology, we developed a junior research project with high school students of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Espírito Santo (Brazil), which aimed the construction of a teaching kit of electrophoresis. Electrophoresis is a technique widely used in molecular biology laboratories, which is applied to separate molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. In this technique, electrically charged molecules are exposed to an electric field and then they move towards the oppositely charged pole, being deposited in specific points of the matrix used. The kit built in this work consists of a source of 70 V, and accessories and reagents that are readily available and present low cost and low risk to the health of users. The use of the kit allowed for electrophoretic assays with nucleic acids and food dyes. The kit also contains a printed material that addresses issues about DNA technology and the device user’s guide with suggestions of experiences to simulate paternity test, virus identification and others. The application of the teaching kit in practical classes with students and teachers of basic education showed that the activity was effective in reducing the number of errors in answers contained in a questionnaire related to the electrophoresis. Moreover, biology teachers evaluated the printed material of the didactic kit and 75% of them classified the language applied to this material as appropriate and classified the technique as executable for the use in their classrooms.