The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world. In particular, almost all individuals worldwide have become more fearful of viruses since the pandemic than before. However, virus education worldwide, including Japan, is currently insufficient in terms of virus literacy in high school and undergraduate biology courses. In Japan, viruses are only taught in conjunction with infectious diseases, such as AIDS and influenza, in the high school subjects Health and Physical Education or Modern Society but are not sufficiently addressed in the Sciences (including biology) because viruses are not considered to be living organisms. However, in several undergraduate courses in Japan and worldwide, virus education is receiving increasing attention and development. Good teaching materials on bacteriophages are offered in such courses, taught via lab-based experiments, including plaque assay, titration, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and gene amplification with polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Recently discovered giant viruses are reported to be useful in microscopy-based experiments for high school and undergraduate courses, with potential as teaching materials for virus education, similar to bacteriophages. The development of teaching materials for virus education is crucial and is necessary considering the threat and risk of future viruses for human society.

We conducted a class for 5th graders in elementary school to observe the blood flow of loach using either a mobile microscope or an optical microscope. We compared the educational effects between the classes by analyzing conversations, worksheets, and a questionnaire survey. As a result, it was confirmed that the class using the mobile microscope improved the quality of conversation at an early stage, promoted awareness, and showed high motivation for the next observation.

Virus education in high school and undergraduate biology courses worldwide, including Japan, is currently insufficient in terms of virus literacy, even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, in Japan, especially in high school biology course, bioinformatics education has not been fully developed. This study develops a new “virus informatics” exercise using web tools, which is useful in the biology courses of high school and undergraduate school of the university except for the school of medicine. In this exercise, Clustal Omega, AlphaFold2, and FoldSeek were considered useful for molecular phylogenetic analysis, 3D structure estimation, and structural similarity analysis, respectively. In addition, we conclude that viral major capsid protein, which has structural similarity with eukaryotic proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), is the most interesting target protein for analysis. This activity raises students’ awareness and knowledge about virus and virus-eukaryotic relationships in terms of their evolutions and lineages.