Implications for Undergraduate Education of Two Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences: Biochemistry and Biophysics

As CBE—Life Sciences Education readers know, modern biology has become more quantitative and mechanistic rather than qualitative and phenomenological. Indeed, the American Society for Cell Biology (2010) notes that “biology learning encompasses diverse fields, including math, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer science, as well as the interdisciplinary intersections of biology with these fields.” Because of this, interdisciplinary biology courses are increasingly critical for preparing undergraduates for further education and careers in the life sciences. The problem is that many institutions do not reflect this in their undergraduate course offerings. In this letter, we show that the growth of two biological disciplines, namely biochemistry and biophysics, can be described in terms of their representation in the research literature. On this basis, wemake predictions about the future trends of research in these disciplines and the implications of these trends for undergraduate education. Themostwidely taught interdisciplinary biological science is probably biochemistry. Many undergraduate biology and chemistry departments recognize its importance and offer it as a core course in their curricula. Biophysics is another interdisciplinary biological science. Although it is not as popular as biochemistry, the growing importance of the subject should be recognized by teaching institutions and reflected in their course offerings. Unfortunately, it seems that the number of institutions that have noticed the demand for it is limited.