Students who enroll in Biochemistry 507 Honors and Biochemistry 551 have their very own Magic School Bus moment. Characters in the beloved Magic School Bus books and television series gain first-hand experiences by boarding a magic school bus that shrinks them down in size so that they can explore systems such as bee hives and the human body. Without access to a magic bus, biochemistry undergraduates at UW–Madison are experiencing life’s molecular building blocks up close using virtual reality (VR), donning VR glasses to wind through protein helices, zoom in on ions, and explore functional groups in the Biochemistry Department’s molecular visualization lab.
“You can look at a picture of the Grand Canyon in a book, but it doesn’t give you the same sense of scale as visiting the Grand Canyon,” says biochemistry professor Aaron Hoskins, who runs the molecular visualization lab. “This is as close as we can get to visiting a protein to explore structures and how they relate to each other. You just gain a different awareness when you are surrounded by the protein and you’re experiencing it up close and in three dimensions.”
Hoskins is currently using the VR system with students in the honors section of BIOCHEM 507. He hopes that the technology will help them think more holistically and creatively about the proteins they study.
“I think anything that can give students a sense of wonder about what they’re studying is a good thing,” says Hoskins. “It’s easy to memorize what different functional groups do and how they work together. This technology gives students an opportunity to see up close incredibly complex molecules. They get to have that sense of discovery. My hope is that it builds a new level of understanding — that they’ll walk around the protein and be thinking about developing new bioproducts or finding new drug targets.”
Biochemistry major Ella Martell took BIOCHEM 507 Honors in her junior year. Working in pairs, Martell and her classmates used the VR glasses to explore an ATP synthase found in tuberculosis, focusing on components of the protein relevant to inhibitory drugs. Martell found that the interactive experience helped her to visualize key concepts that she learned in lecture classes.
“It’s one thing to memorize structures and biochemical reactions,” says Martell. “But it can be hard to understand the actual mechanics, orientations, and movements that are so key to protein structure and function. I could see and appreciate the protein so much more with a 360 degree view. I could zoom in and out and manipulate the image to see it from any angle.”
Biochemistry teaching faculty Erica Shu invites students to try out the VR glasses in the first few weeks of her upper-level undergraduate course, BIOCHEM 551. She hopes that the experience helps the students conceptualize proteins as three-dimensional structures and gain a deeper understanding of proteins that appear in their problem sets.
“It’s hard for students to translate what they’re seeing in their books and on lecture slides into 3D structures,” explains Shu. “A lot of what they learn about in biochemistry classes is about how structure and function are related. This gives them a chance to visualize the structures more fully.”
Jacqueline Miller took BIOCHEM 551 in spring 2024, her final semester at UW—Madison, to round out her biochemistry major. Miller, who also majored in chemistry and Italian, prioritized experiential learning throughout her undergraduate studies, traveling to Uganda with biochemistry professor James Ntambi and conducting research on diabetes in the Ntambi Lab. Using the VR glasses gave Miller a new understanding of proteins’ 3D structure. “Viewing the protein with VR allowed me to switch between viewing smaller portions of the protein and the full structure only with the click of a button,” recalls Miller. “We were able to rotate and zoom in and out to analyze the protein HCAII, which was more valuable than viewing the protein’s structure flat on a page.”
Few biochemistry undergraduate programs have access to VR equipment, say Hoskins and Shu. They’re currently developing additional lesson plans that harness the potential of VR for biochemistry education and hope to acquire additional pairs of VR glasses in the future, so that multiple students can explore a protein at the same time and talk about their virtual field trip in real-time.
“What I’d love to see is a whole classroom of students all exploring the twists and turns of a protein together,” says Hoskins, “talking to each other about what they’re seeing and getting to experience a sense of wonder and discovery together.”
Written by Renata Solan.
Featured image: Ben Pralat (foreground), an undergraduate student, explores a protein using virtual reality (VR) equipment in the Biochemistry Department. Graduate students Hunter Krzysik, Sierra Love, and Connor White (background) interact with the VR headset’s networked computer. Photo: Paul Escalante / UW–Madison Biochemistry Department.