The DNA sequence of Tetrahymena telomeres was the first to be determined among all telomeres by Elizabeth Blackburn and Joseph Gall in 1978. In 1982, Jack Szostak and Blackburn showed that the unique DNA sequence contained in the telomeres served to protect the chromosomes from degradation. In 1985, Carol Greider and Blackburn showed how the telomeres could be elongated by the enzyme telomerase. These discoveries are milestones marking the start of the molecular era of telomere biology. Telomeres occur at the ends of chromosomes, like the plastic sheaths at the ends of shoelaces. The significance of telomere research was recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Blackburn, Szostak, and Greider in 2009.

Although the award of the Nobel Prize is undoubtedly one of the most exciting events in the history of telomere biology, it by no means signals that we have reached the peak of telomere research. Research on telomeres and telomerase is still moving at a very rapid pace, and new findings about telomere functions and the underlying mechanisms are unveiled daily. This paper reviews the early work as well as recent advances in the field.

Many studies support the shift to interactive biology classrooms. Implementing these pedagogical changes can be particularly challenging for educators who must balance class preparation time with student engagement and course content. One approach to finding this balance is the use of complex classes with many components that continually redirect student focus This study aimed to determine which components of a complex lecture were most engaging to senior-level college students in an animal behavior course. For this study, I presented students in two animal behavior classes with a PowerPoint presentation, an activity, an group work, class discussion, and a PowerPoint presentation with videos. Students responded to Likert items on a survey to rate their interest in lecture activities, the extent to which the activities encouraged thinking, and to identify their favorite component of the class. Students agreed that the activity encouraged. The two classes varied in preferred components, with the first class leaning toward the activity, whereas the second class preferred the videos, but these differences were not statistically significant. Overall, most students identified components of the traditional lecture as their favorites. These results suggest that moderately interactive approaches, such as videos, can engage students.

Traditionally, science and art are not combined as an instructional method in the undergraduate biology laboratory. This research examined the differences in the construction of biology content knowledge in student work in an inquirybased lab and in an inquiry- and arts-based lab. The qualitative research findings indicated that the students developed deeper understanding of the content knowledge when an arts-based instructional method (storytelling) was included as part of the inquiry-based instruction.

Biology teachers inevitably struggle with how best to teach evolution. Students arrive in their classrooms with preconceptions, many of which are overwhelmingly skeptical, and science teachers are increasingly being pressured to adhere to an arbitrary degree of objectivity that makes discussing scientific worldviews challenging. These challenges have resulted in evolution being taught largely as a series of explanations for questions arising from observations of the living world. In so doing, students may not have a chance to grapple with the worldview that produced those explanations, or develop a more mechanistic intuition for inheritance and change in the world they see around themselves. Here we put forth all the tools necessary for a class to build a simulation of an evolving population experiencing natural selection from scratch in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Not only will this activity help students experiment with the natural world more mechanistically, but it will also allow them to learn as actual evolutionary biologists do.

The lab presented in this paper utilizes a proven four-step pedagogical framework (McLaughlin & Coyle, 2016) to redesign a classic Association of Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE) undergraduate lab (McLaughlin & McCain, 1999) into an authentic research experience on vertebrate fourchambered heart development and physiology. The model system is the chicken embryo. Through their research, students are also exposed to the embryonic anatomy and physiology of the vertebrate heart, the electrical circuitry of the developing heart, and the effects of pharmacological drugs on heart rate and contractility. Classical embryological micro-techniques, explantation of the embryo, surgical removal of the beating heart, isolation of the heart chambers, and more advanced tissue culture methods are also conducted. In this laboratory paradigm, students work in pairs to ask their own questions concerning the effects of two human cardiovascular drugs, denopamine™ and acebutolol™ on both in vivo and in vitro chicken embryonic heart rate and contractility, develop testable hypotheses based on information gathered from relevant scientific literature, devise and carry out a controlled experiment, and present the data in a professional scientific manner pertaining to a topic of clinical significance.

To help high school students develop a deeper understanding of energy and matter flow in biological systems, a key goal of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), we have designed a series of inquiry-driven modules that experimentally explore photosynthesis in the context of carbohydrate partitioning. Carbohydrate partitioning refers to the distribution of photosynthesis products from source organs, such as leaves, to growing or storage tissues. These cost- and timeeffective modules help students develop a more integrated understanding of how energy flows from light into leaves before moving outward to other parts of the plant and ultimately into other organisms. Our approach of teaching carbohydrate partitioning along with photosynthesis greatly expands the number of NGSS core ideas and cross-cutting concepts in an integrated manner, empowers students to see how photosynthesis and carbohydrate partitioning are central to their existence, and provides a rich platform for experimentally addressing questions related to photosynthesis, crop production, global climate change, plant physiology, and the carbon cycle.

The use of primary scientific inquiry and experimentation to develop students' understanding of methodologies used by scientists and the nature of science is a key component of the Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Introduction to inquiry-based experimentation also has been shown to improve students' attitudes and interest in science. However, implementing scientific inquiry activities that include experimental design and data analysis in a classroom of middle or high school students can be daunting for teachers with limited experimental experience. Here, we present a fourto five-day, inquiry-based laboratory activity designed to teach students about the scientific process and excite them about scientific discovery while providing opportunities for interactions of both teachers and students with scientists in the field. Within this laboratory module, students make observations and develop their own research questions, then design, execute, analyze, and present the results of their hypothesis-driven experiments investigating the behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans, a relatively inexpensive and tractable model organism. Our experience running this module in a middle school biology classroom suggests students enjoyed the opportunity to investigate their own research questions, and post-course surveys indicated that students' fear of biology decreased and their interest in biology-related careers increased following participation in the module.

It is commonly said that perception is everything. Political candidates are judged by how the public understands their platforms; consumers make purchases based on how they view the products; and business executives make corporate decisions based on potential outcomes of business deals. Likewise, a person's preconception of a topic can change how they learn about and associate that knowledge. Topics with a shared vocabulary between science and common language, such as the terms used when teaching evolution and phylogenetic trees, are especially subject to misconceptions stemming from a lack of understanding how the terminology is used in science. One way to assess the preconceptions students have about specific topics is through using free association techniques. Free association word recall (word association) activities ask students to recall words and phrases associated with stimulus term. Educators can use student responses to learn how students understand and organize prior knowledge, and thus structure subsequent instruction activities to target the revealed preconceptions of the topic.

Teaching scientific inquiry in large interdisciplinary classes is a challenge. We describe a creative problem-based learning approach, using a motivational island crisis scenario, to inspire research design. Students were empowered to formulate their individual scientific inquiry and then guided to develop a testable hypothesis, aims, and objectives in designing a research proposal. Personalized data sets matched to the research objectives were provided to individual students for analysis and presentation. This technique helps students to gain critical insights into the global value of interdisciplinary collaboration toward solving complex real-world problems. Students learn the front end of research, how to formulate a line of scientific inquiry and design an innovative research project— both important skills for them as tomorrow's leaders and entrepreneurs.