I. Construction & Development Overview
Relying on Jiangsu Provincial Advantage Discipline and First-Class Discipline Doctoral Program (Biology), the Comprehensive Biology Teaching Laboratory of the School of Life Sciences, Xuzhou Medical University integrates experimental resources from five teaching and research sections: Cell Biology, Genetics, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics and Laboratory Animal Science. It has built an all-round biology experimental teaching platform integrating basic teaching, comprehensive practical training, virtual simulation, innovation incubation and school-enterprise practical training.
Centered on three undergraduate majors of the School, namely Biological Science, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, the laboratory delivers full-process experimental teaching for over 650 undergraduates and more than 80 postgraduates (master’s and doctoral candidates). It also supports general biology experimental courses for all medical majors across the university. Adhering to the development philosophy of "integrating medicine and biology, empowering with engineering technology, taking scientific innovation as the guide, and coordinating industry and education", the laboratory closely responds to the development of biomedical industry in Jiangsu Province and the national talent strategy for life sciences, and builds a practical education carrier with distinctive medical characteristics.
Founded in 2023, the laboratory passed the school-level acceptance in the same year, and has become a core practical training base supporting the school’s major-category enrollment and top-tier talent cultivation.
II. Management & Operation Support System
The laboratory adopts a four-level management framework: overall coordination by the School Teaching Steering Committee, full-time administration by the laboratory director, modular responsibility of each teaching and research section, and daily operation by experimental technicians. It establishes a three-dimensional operation system covering "management mechanism, quality control and diversified evaluation", together with four standardized management systems: staff post management system, shared large-scale instrument management system, experimental teaching quality monitoring system, and safety, reagent and consumable control system, so as to coordinate and allocate all teaching resources including venues, instruments, reagents and teaching staff.
A dynamic teaching quality evaluation system covering the whole chain of pre-class preview, in-class operation, after-class innovation and final assessment has been established, forming a closed-loop management process of "pre-class supervision — process recording — achievement evaluation — feedback collection — continuous rectification". The laboratory implements a full-time reservation-based opening mechanism: it opens to routine teaching all working days, and provides special access for undergraduate innovation teams and postgraduate research projects in evenings and weekends. Meanwhile, full-process safety control is implemented, including online safety education assessment, instrument operation access authorization, reagent ledger traceability and standardized disposal of biological waste, ensuring standardized, orderly and safe experimental teaching.
III. Teaching Team Construction
The laboratory is supported by the complete faculty team of the School of Life Sciences, including 20 teachers responsible for theoretical teaching and experimental guidance, 95% of whom hold doctoral degrees. The team features high academic qualifications, interdisciplinary backgrounds, and rich experience in both research and teaching, forming an innovative experimental teaching faculty.
The full-time technical management team consists of 3 members, all holding master’s degrees or above in biology-related majors. They are long engaged in instrument maintenance, experimental curriculum preparation and undergraduate innovation project guidance.
IV. Venues, Hardware & Digital Teaching Resources
The laboratory covers a teaching area of approximately 400 square meters, equipped with more than one thousand sets of teaching instruments and equipment with a total investment exceeding 1.5 million RMB. It is divided into multiple functional teaching platforms as follows:
Basic Biology Teaching Platform: 12 standardized basic laboratories equipped with ordinary light microscopes, stereomicroscopes, spectrophotometers, centrifuges and other basic facilities, undertaking hands-on courses for General Biology, Biochemistry and Basic Genetics.
Molecular & Cell Training Platform: 6 specialized laboratories furnished with PCR instruments, gel imaging systems, protein purification systems, ultra-clean workbenches, CO₂ cell incubators and low-temperature ultra-speed centrifuges, delivering comprehensive experiments such as cell culture and protein analysis.
V. Teaching System & Talent Cultivation Model
Upholding the experimental teaching philosophy of "consolidating biological foundations, integrating medical features, strengthening practical skills and highlighting innovative practice", the laboratory aligns with the school’s talent training scheme of "major-category enrollment, diversion training and whole-process tutor system", and constructs a three-tier progressive modular experimental teaching system: basic verification experiments — comprehensive design experiments — scientific research innovation projects.
The core idea of teaching reform lies in the "Four Early Cultivation" strategy: early exposure to medical biology cases, early mastery of core molecular experimental technologies, early participation in research groups, and early connection with biomedical industrial practice. Hierarchical and categorized teaching is implemented: basic verification experiments for freshmen; cross-module comprehensive design experiments for sophomores; and full access to innovation research projects and enterprise training programs for juniors and seniors. Cutting-edge technologies including gene editing, disease model construction and biological big data analysis are integrated into daily teaching.
The laboratory offers 23 experimental courses and 216 standardized experimental projects for all biology majors of the school, delivering over 420,000 teaching hours annually and covering the full training cycle of undergraduates, masters and doctoral students. Relying on more than 20 off-campus biomedical internship bases, it bridges classroom teaching and industrial practice, forming an integrated practical training chain of "on-campus comprehensive training + on-the-job enterprise practice".
VI. Student Innovation & Training Achievements
The laboratory opens its innovation platform to undergraduates all day long and implements a one-on-one undergraduate supervisor guidance system. Student research interest groups are set up focusing on featured research directions such as nematode genetic models, cell injury mechanisms and bioinformatic disease screening to fully stimulate students’ innovative capacity. The laboratory regularly holds experimental skill competitions, research project incubation camps and life science popularization activities.
VII. Future Development Plan
In the next stage, centering on the school-running positioning of Xuzhou Medical University and the disciplinary development goals of the School of Life Sciences, the laboratory will take cultivating interdisciplinary innovative talents with combined expertise in medicine and biology as its core task, and advance three key areas of construction:
Teaching Connotation Reform: Iterate and update experimental projects, add training modules covering cutting-edge synthetic biology, single-cell sequencing and AI-based biological analysis, and build a provincial first-class biology curriculum cluster.
Platform Hardware Upgrade: Add high-end equipment such as high-throughput sequencers and flow cytometry analyzers, improve the full-process virtual simulation teaching platform, and build an intelligent unattended open laboratory.
Talent Cultivation System Expansion: Deepen the construction of school-enterprise joint training bases, establish an innovation workshop for top biology students, meet the construction standards of Provincial Experimental Teaching Demonstration Centers, comprehensively improve the overall level of medical-featured biology practical teaching, and deliver high-quality innovative talents for life science and biomedical industries in Jiangsu Province and the whole country.
