Bi8: Intro to Molecular Bio

Announcements

Welcome to the Winter 2012 Bi8 course web page. For the next 10 weeks or so, we will embark on an amazing journey exploring Biology at a molecular level. Have you ever wondered how your skin cells become very durable and protective, your heart (cardiac) muscle cells beat continuously throughout your life, whereas the photoreceptor cells in your eyes are fragile yet have the capability comparable to a digital camera? All these cell types originate from a single cell, the fertilized egg or zygote, and they all contain exactly the same genomic DNA. Yet this DNA carries within itself the code that enables each of these cell types to adopt highly specialized and distinctive functions based on differential gene expression. This class will discuss the basic principles that enable genomic code to be read out reproducibly to generate these different cell types in a highly organized fashion, and the evolutionary principles that allow us to see into the probable history of these mechanisms.

There are four main sources of material for this course. The first one will be the lectures, two per week for 90 min each. These lectures include material that is not in the textbook which convey the main take-home messages for the course. The second source of material will be the textbook. The third source will be readings assigned for the individual problem sets. The fourth will be focused resource sessions run by the TAs.

This class will emphasize experimental approaches, using material from the current research literature to involve you directly in experimental design, data analysis and interpretation in molecular biology today. Our intent is that by the end of this course, not only will you know the “facts” as currently understood in Molecular Biology, but also be able to propose hypotheses on things that are unknown and design realistic experiments to test your hypotheses. Therefore, a background in Organic Chemistry and AP Biology can be useful. However, those of you who are coming to this course from some other background are also important to the class and should find everything you need to appreciate the full power of molecular biology.

For review, and for people completely new to the field, the first of the special focused resource sessions will operate as mini-“Bootcamps”. Bootcamp is designed to provide the students with supplementary required background or parallel discussion in addition to the topics discussed in the class. The resource sessions will become workshops for exploring specific fields in detail in the later weeks of the course. In addition, the TAs will hold regular office hours to help clarify materials discussed in class. Please remember, we are here to help you and, hopefully, to inspire you! So, take advantage and come to our office hours. Please don’t send us e-mail as a substitute to coming to the office hours.

Best Wishes,
Bi8 Teaching crew