A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ENABLING A RAPID RESPONSE IN TRANSFORMING BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY TEACHING

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant the adoption of emergency remote teaching by many who teach at university. This has been a particular challenge for courses that include essential hands-on practical skill development. The prior establishment of our Community of Practice, aimed at transforming laboratory education, has meant we have been able to respond rapidly to the challenge of moving face-to-face laboratory teaching to online sessions. Biochemistry students at University of Western Australia already complete their pre-laboratory reading and quiz asynchronously online, following the “Prepare, Do, Review” model. Students then attend face-to-face laboratory and post-laboratory sessions. We have now developed online laboratory and post-lab sessions using Zoom and incorporating videos of laboratory procedures. Students deliver oral presentations in the post-lab and the summative quiz is now asynchronous and online. The changes have provided the impetus for reviewing other laboratory sessions, and the introduction of electronic laboratory notebooks. We have also expanded our Community of Practice with a team of postdoctoral researchers to ensure the techniques students are learning are contemporary and relevant to research. We will discuss the challenges in implementing the changes we have made, and the gains in the development of new resources and teaching strategies

Pan-serotype diagnostic for foot-and-mouth disease using the consensus antigen of nonstructural protein 3B

An amino acid consensus sequence for the seven serotypes of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) nonstructural protein 3B, including all three contiguous repeats, and its use in the development of a pan-serotype diagnostic test for all seven FMDV serotypes are described. The amino acid consensus sequence of the 3B protein was determined from a multiple-sequence alignment of 125 sequences of 3B. The consensus 3B (c3B) protein was expressed as a soluble recombinant fusion protein with maltose-binding protein (MBP) using a bacterial expression system and was affinity purified using amylose resin. The MBP-c3B protein was used as the antigen in the development of a competition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA) for detection of anti-3B antibodies in bovine sera. The comparative diagnostic sensitivity and specificity at 47% inhibition were estimated to be 87.22% and 93.15%, respectively. Reactivity of c3B with bovine sera representing the seven FMDV serotypes demonstrated the pan-serotype diagnostic capability of this bioreagent. The consensus antigen and competition ELISA are described here as candidates for a pan-serotype diagnostic test for FMDV infection