BICH403: Cellular Biophysics
Course Description: This course is a 3 credit undergraduate course. The prerequisites are MATH 151/152. It will explore a range of current topics in physical biology and systems biology including some of the numbers, length and time scales, and genetic circuits relevant to living cells, with an emphasis on developing quantitative and predictive statements about cellular life. This course will introduce some basic tools of quantitative biology, such as fluorescence imaging and data analysis through Matlab programing.
Textbooks: None required. Philip Nelson’s “Biological Physics”, Rob Phillips’s “Physical Biology of the Cell” and Uri Alon’s “An Introduction to Systems Biology” are recommended as background texts. Books are reserved in Daisy’s office, Biobio 308.
Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of the course, students should be able to describe the meaning and importance of physical biology, explain key quantitative concepts, and apply fundamental principles and formulae of biophysics and genetic regulatory networks to solve basic biophysical problems, and read and evaluate the primary scientific literature.
BICH404: Biochemical Calculations
Course Description: BICH 404, Biochemical Calculations is a 2 credit undergraduate course required of all Biochemistry and Genetics majors. Other students are also welcome. However, concurrent registration or prior completion of BICH 440 is expected. This course will cover quantitative topics in which biochemists are expected to be proficient.
Textbooks: None required. However, a useful reference for this course is Biochemical Calculations, Second Edition, by Irwin Segel.
Learning Outcomes: Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to understand and solve problems associated with solution composition, acid-base equilibria, buffers, binding equilibria, binding kinetics, enzyme kinetics, and coupled equilibria.