The goal of the project is to improve the instructional laboratory experience of intermediate-level undergraduate majors in preparation for additional experience in upper-level laboratories, independent research projects in faculty laboratories, graduate school, and employment. This course offers students an integrated, quarter-long experience in modern biochemistry using an experiment with taq polymerase, a DNA polymerase from Thermus aquaticus which is used widely in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. The continuity and integrated format in this exercise will give students a more complete understanding of how to organize and perform a complex series of tasks to achieve a final end-product, lay the intellectual framework of experimentation for other courses where more advanced experiments are performed, and give the students insight into the importance of standards and into their competence ln the laboratory. Finally, using their taq polymerase product in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system designed for criminal apprehension will help students connect the abstractness of biochemistry to the world in which they live.