Bi 10 Course Website 2018

Instructors:

Elizabeth Bertani, Lecturer in Biology (B171 Church) x4917

Bi 10 is a laboratory course designed to introduce you to some basic techniques and concepts used in modern cell and molecular biology. We will be following a project lab format in this course. The experiments that you are doing will build upon each other from week to week, just like they do in authentic laboratory research. We hope that this format exposes you to the anticipation, excitement, and occasional disappointment that accompany "live" laboratory research in biology. The general outline of the course will be to synthesize a gene that encodes an enzyme, express a recombinant version of this gene in bacteria, purify the expressed enzyme, and assay its activity. This set of experiments recapitulates many of the manipulations that researchers on the cutting edge perform as they attempt to identify the functions of novel proteins identified by a variety of methods including genetic analysis and genome sequencing projects. In order to pass Bi 10 you must carry out all 9 labs and describe them in two written lab reports. As the course proceeds, we want you to concentrate on:

1. Becoming proficient in the execution of basic techniques.
2. Understanding the concepts underlying the techniques you will be using.
3. Understanding the importance of controls for interpreting the results of experiments.