Philosophy Philosophy of This Portion of Graduate Biophysical Chemistry
Philosophy
The main objective of this part of the course is to teach students the basic facts and principles of biology through the window of molecular biology and the ability to think and reason with them. Because the area of molecular genetics-molecular biology is relatively mature, it is possible to teach the principles and require that students learn how to apply them. Realistically, this is the only reasonable approach to the subject since molecular genetics now is far too advanced, large, and complex for much value to come from attempting to cover the material in an encyclopedia-like fashion where only facts must be learned. Only the core of the subject can be covered by using such an approach, however, but most of the remainder of the vast subject is a logical extension of the basic ideas and principles. One consequence of the principles and analysis approach is that the course is not easy. Students say they work hard to learn the material and how to think and solve problems.
An auxiliary objective of the design of the course is to help students develop an appreciation for elegant and beautiful experiments. A substantial number of such experiments are explained in lecture or in the text, and more are described in the required readings.
Although the ideal preparation for taking the course would be the completion of preliminary courses in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, and physical chemistry, few students have such a background. Most commonly, only one or two of the above-mentioned courses have been taken, with some students coming from a more physical or chemical background, and other students coming from a more biological background.
Structure
Students receive information from four main sources, lectures, the text, the assigned readings, and their own explorations on the web.
The course consists of two lecture-discussions per week, with the topics of most chapters of the text "Genetics and Molecular Biology" being covered in one session. The classroom sessions are designed to encourage active rather than passive learning. Usually the material covered in class includes a book chapter and an assigned research paper. It is expected that students also will actively seek out and study additional material related to the course material or topics mentioned in class for clarification or completion of ideas only partially developed in the classroom sessions. Normally, one or two challenging problems are assigned per lecture. The solutions to these problems are graded by a TA These homework problems count for approximately one third in the final grade.
Schleif's material will be present on both the midterm and final exams. Solving the exam problems requires thinking and working with ideas and material covered in the lectures, text, homework problems, and assigned readings in contrast to recollection of memorized material.
2/2018