Free Workshops on Molecular Visualization for Undergraduate Bioscience Teaching 1998

Transcriptional regulatory protein
bound to DNA
Understanding the three-dimensional structures of proteins, DNA, RNA, and their interactions is difficult from flat pictures, yet grasping structure is important to understanding function. Free software is now available which displays attention-grabbing 3D animated images of biological molecules in depth-cued spacefilling color. RasMol (http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol), which works on Windows or Macs, encourages self-directed exploration. Chime (http://www.umass.edu/microbio/chime) allows annotated preset views of molecules to be delivered as web tutorials.

Free, hands-on workshops will be held this spring at Long Island University, Brooklyn NY, and this summer at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. These will prepare college faculty with no prior experience to use molecular visualization in their classes. Participants will travel to the workshop site on three separate days (two this year, one the following year), and are responsible for their own travel expenses (and therefore are expected primarily from the Northeastern USA). Overnight accomodations will be provided free to those needing them (based on distance traveled) for the Amherst MA site only. Participants will be expected to incorporate molecular visualization into their teaching, and to mentor two faculty colleagues at their home institution.

The workshops will be led by Eric Martz, a Professor in the Department of Microbiology. Martz has innovated molecular structure tutorials which are in use throughout the USA and in dozens of other countries. The web site he created (see above) was visited by 40,000 people in 1996.

To obtain more detailed information and a REGISTRATION FORM, visit

http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/workshop.htm

or FAX a request to 413-545-2532, or email a request to emartz@microbio.umass.edu.
Chemists interested in a separate workshop on modeling see http://nickel.chem.umass.edu/nermmw/nermmw.html


Supported by the National Science Foundation (Division of Undergraduate Education), the University of Massachusetts, and Long Island University.