CURE: Microbial Mysteries
September 18, 2025
About
Welcome to Microbial Mysteries, a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) that takes you on a genomics adventure from soil to gut!
This CURE allows students to develop a project using genomics datasets from environments such as human gut and soil, and learn how organisms, high-throughput sequencing, and the scientific process are used in both basic and clinical research.
Skills Level
Genetics
Novice: Introduction to central dogma of molecular biology
Programming skills
Novice: No programming experience needed
Research skills Novice: No scientific researdch experience needed
Learning Goals
- Navigate biological databases - access the wealth of publically available scientific knowledge and data (e.g. NCBI).
- Analyze Big Data - e.g. plot and interpret results from next generation sequencing (NGS) experiment.
- Gain skills in computational and bioinformatics data analysis - e.g. web-based platforms or command-line bioingofmatics tools (e.g. Galaxy, R).
- Practice the scientific process and critical thinking - learing to read and evaluate scientific literature, ask questions, identify avenues for research, design experiments, analyze and interpret data, and integrating results into the broader scientific discourse.
- Engage in scientific research - Apply knowledge and skills learned to complete a project using existing datasets to ask new questions, generate novel conclusions and create and present a Final Poster.
C-MOOR Content Collection
This content is part of a collection of teaching resources developed by C-MOOR. C-MOOR works to break down barriers to scientific participation and build pathways for the next generation of data scientists through authentic research experiences. Learn more about C-MOOR by viewing our projects, or read about how C-MOOR is integrating research experience into undergraduate biology courses at Clovis Community College. –>