Game-based learning to improve understanding of point mutations at secondary school level

Understanding mutations is central to molecular and evolutionary biology and aspects of biomedical sciences. However, via static graphics alone, it is difficult for school students to understand the terminology and the consequences of mutations on amino acids and protein sequences. To help secondary school (high school) students better understand these concepts, we developed a curriculum-linked, three-dimensional visualisation of the following point mutations in Minecraft: substitution, frameshift, and nonsense. This aims to clarify aspects used in bioinformatics workshops for schools, where the mouse GULO gene is aligned against the homologous pseudogene in the human genome, which contains frameshift mutations. Two focus groups were conducted in the first case-study, one consisting of secondary-level educators and the other consisting of masters students from both biological and non-biological degree programmes. These showed that non-specialist students feel they gain an understanding of frameshift mutations from the model and that teachers considered the model had potential for classroom use. These were followed up by a public engagement activity with school students, which suggested students found the visualisation helpful to understand mutations. Our model is available to download for free at https://4273pi.org