Simulator of the Glycolytic Pathway in a Virtual Reality Environment as a Learning Resource for Teaching Cellular Respiration

Abstract

The process of cellular respiration approached in molecular biology, specifically glycolysis, have high complexity and abstraction in the approach used in the subjects that explore the theme, especially because of the materials used, making the visualization of chemical reactions and formation of molecular compounds a hard task. Virtual Reality presents itself as a teaching resource for a diverse range of topics, including biology, making it possible to simplificate the learning process of complex subjects. This paper relates the development of a simulator that acts in an Virtual Reality environment to present a glycolytic chain and its interactions between the process substrates, allowing the users to interact, through a Virtual Reality Headset and controllers, the molecular compounds and analyze essential chemical reactions to the cellular respiration process. As result, we have an VR environment that facilitates the learning process and indicates a new teaching tool to molecular biology.