Teaching Molecular Biology using computational tools and tacking into account the learning styles of students

A challenge in educating undergraduate and graduate students is to introduce them to the Internet, especially to visualization and molecular modeling software, and to leach them how to use these programs in their future research. This paper illustrates a few ways to use computer science or teaching and learning the modeling of biological molecules. The results demonstrate that effective use of molecular visualization can improve students understanding of protein structure and functions, independently of the modalities they use to acquire information. Using the molecular graphic programs, students obtain hands-on experiences to explore the structural aspects of macromolecular systems. All the applications are made for calcium binding proteins. The use of the Internet tools and of the molecular visualization software in biochemistry and molecular biophysics classroom, with their advantages and disadvantages, is discussed.