Biotechnology Education Commentary: The “Business ” of the Biosciences Can Be Integrated into a Biochemistry Curriculum

Numerous efforts are underway to rethink how we teach the life sciences and keep our students interested in sci-ence. The explosion of knowledge derived from large scale sequencing and the innumerable “omics ” efforts has cre-ated an opportunity to teach at every level with integrated and systems approaches as well as to rely on the vast new appreciation for the mechanisms of evolution as a unifying principle of all aspects of biology. At least partly as a result of these research advances, there are noteworthy efforts that focus on developing innovative material for the young-est grades, new approaches to teaching introductory biol-ogy at the college level, and major advances in the reformu-lation and integration of curricula for graduate life sciences education. To relate molecular life sciences to the lives and concerns of our students, illustrations of the molecula