The constantly evolving nature of genomics provides new challenges for students in Public Health as they try to understand how genomic information relates to health and disease. As Public Health curricula attempt to keep pace with the most recent advances in genomics, students should gain experience with analyzing genomic data and applying genomic tools to the study of health-related issues. To advance undergraduate and graduate student education and provide a more comprehensive view of genomics, we developed an educational project including both pedagogic and research components to characterize skin microbial communities (microbiomes) using targeted amplicon sequencing of their genomes (metataxonomy). All students completed the lab procedures, analyzed 16S rRNA genomic data (formative assessments), and wrote a five-page scientific report summarizing and discussing their results (summative assessment). Student grades for the summative assessment ranged from 31.5 to 40 (out of 40) points. They also successfully completed two practicums (problem sets) focused on microbiome sequence data and responded to 12 minute-papers related to genomic topics covered in class. In all these exercises the 2019 students outperformed 2018 students, who did not participate in this educational lab project. By fulfilling all the requirements of this project-based learning experience, students better understood the complexity of genomics and acquired a valuable set of marketable experience and skills in molecular technologies, bioinformatics and statistics (quantitative skills). Additionally, students were able to generate new valuable microbial 16S rRNA genomic data and test hypotheses about the composition and diversity of the microbes living on our skin (microbiota).

中文翻译：

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测试“祖母假说”：将皮肤微生物组多样性表征为基于项目的基因组学学习方法†


基因组学不断发展的性质为公共卫生专业的学生提供了新的挑战，因为他们试图了解基因组信息如何与健康和疾病相关。由于公共卫生课程试图跟上基因组学的最新进展，学生应该获得分析基因组数据并将基因组工具应用于健康相关问题研究的经验。为了推进本科生和研究生教育并提供更全面的基因组学观点，我们开发了一个教育项目，包括教学和研究部分，以使用基因组的靶向扩增子测序（元分类学）来表征皮肤微生物群落（微生物组）。所有学生都完成了实验室程序，分析了 16S rRNA 基因组数据（形成性评估），并撰写了一份五页的科学报告，总结和讨论了他们的结果（总结性评估）。总结性评估的学生成绩范围为 31.5 至 40 分（满分 40 分）。他们还成功完成了两个专注于微生物组序列数据的实习（问题集），并对课堂上涉及的基因组主题相关的 12 篇分钟论文做出了回应。在所有这些练习中，2019 届学生的表现优于未参加该教育实验室项目的 2018 届学生。通过满足基于项目的学习体验的所有要求，学生更好地理解了基因组学的复杂性，并获得了分子技术、生物信息学和统计学（定量技能）方面的一套宝贵的市场经验和技能。此外，学生们还能够生成新的有价值的微生物 16S rRNA 基因组数据，并测试有关生活在我们皮肤上的微生物（微生物群）的组成和多样性的假设。