Engaging complexity: learning about biological systems via construction of and interaction with computational models

 

Lara R. Appleby, Heather Bergan-Roller, Audrey Crowther, Joseph Dauer & Tomas Helikar

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2018, Volume 39

Abstract

Strategies to teach and learn about complex biological processes are often reductionist, aiming primarily at memorization of system components. This approach often falls short of developing in students an understanding of the integration of the components towards a coherent and dynamic system. We present a lesson designed in our software, Cell Collective (https://learn.cellcollective.org) to enable students to learn about biological processes and their dynamic nature by building and simulating computational models. In the lesson, students gain an understanding of regulation of the lac operon as determined by a system of interconnected molecules and complexes and how negative feedback loops produce oscillations by interacting with a pre-constructed model of the lac operon and editing a simpler, incomplete model to replicate known system behaviors. All skills which students build through this lesson (model navigation, simulation, construction) are useful across Cell Collective modules on a variety of traditional biology topics.

Keywords:  simulation, Lac operon, gene regulation, modeling, networks, systems thinking

University of Wisconsin, Madison (2017)