Students of science tend to learn about scientific breakthroughs through textbooks and scientific journals, with a focus on the end result – the main discovery. But most of the research work underlying a discovery begins with a hypothesis – a key element of the scientific process that is often neglected in a classroom. So what is a hypothesis and how to frame one? This article shares some key points.

This article was first published by Editage Insights, Cactus Communications.

Experiments and practical lab work, considered indispensable for training in biology, came to a standstill when educational institutions and laboratories shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, researcher and educator Lakshmy Ramakrishnan describes how Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, could offer students exposure akin to lab work, even looking beyond the pandemic.

Many misconceptions can creep into an undergraduate student's mind as they study gene expression in their classrooms. In continuation with an earlier discussion on the common misconceptions in gene expression, in this article, educator Maya Murdeshwar from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai highlights some of the misconceptions around the process of translation – the process of building a polypeptide chain based on genetic information.

Problem-based learning is a pedagogical approach that enables students to learn scientific concepts in real-life contexts. In this article, Lakshmy Ramakrishnan, a researcher and educator, elaborates on this approach with examples and explains why it is so useful.

Molecular biology textbooks teach us that during gene expression, only one strand of DNA is used to synthesize RNA. Does this mean that only one of the strands of an entire DNA duplex is functional? What does the other strand do? Which one is called the 'sense' strand? Is it the same as the 'template' strand? These are some questions that often baffle undergraduate students of biology. In this article, educator Maya Murdeshwar of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai describes how she approaches these concepts in her classroom.