title: Learning nucleic acids solving by bioinformatics problems.
abstract: The article describes the development of a new approach to teach molecular biology to undergraduate biology students. The 34 students who participated in this research belonged to the first period of the Biological Sciences teaching course of the Instituto Federal Goiano at Urutaí Campus, Brazil. They were registered in Cell Biology in the first semester of 2013. They received four 55 min-long expository/dialogued lectures that covered the content of "structure and functions of nucleic acids". Later the students were invited to attend four meetings (in a computer laboratory) in which some concepts of Bioinformatics were presented and some problems of the Rosalind platform were solved. The observations we report here are very useful as a broad groundwork to development new research. An interesting possibility is research into the effects of bioinformatics interventions that improve molecular biology learning.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Genética e Melhoramento de Plantas Universidade Federal de Goiás, Câmpus Samambaia, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil.
authors.forename: Rhewter
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nunes
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Genética e Melhoramento de Plantas Universidade Federal de Goiás, Câmpus Samambaia, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil.
authors.forename: Edivaldo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Barbosa de Almeida Júnior
authors.affiliation: Professor do Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Instituto Federal Goiano, Laboratório de Genética e Biologia Molecular, Câmpus Urutaí, Goiás, Brazil.
authors.forename: Ivandilson
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pessoa Pinto de Menezes
authors.affiliation: Professor do Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Instituto Federal Goiano, Laboratório de Pesquisas Biológicas, Câmpus Urutaí, Goiás, Brazil.
authors.forename: Guilherme
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Malafaia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000193:education*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008967:Molecular Biology / Q000193:education*; D009696:Nucleic Acids / Q000032:analysis*; D011340:Problem Solving; D018794:Problem-Based Learning / Q000379:methods*; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D009696:Nucleic Acids
keywords: Rosalind platform; biological sciences; teaching tools; undergraduate education