BSCI 420, 421, BIOL 620 CELL BIOLOGY Lecture 1

Welcome back to C. P. from wherever you spent the summer.

I’m Dennis Goode and this is BSCI 420, if you’re taking the course without lab,

421 with the lab, and BIOL 620 if you’re taking it as a graduate course.

Although we meet together for lectures and exams, these are separate courses and you won’t be competing with people in the other courses.

420 Grades will be based only on the four exams for 400 Pts.

421 Grades will be based on the four exams plus 200 lab points for 600 pts, and

620 Grades will be based on the four exams plus 50 points for your oral and written presentations, for 450 pts.

We will use the new +/- grading scheme based on the fixed scale on the 1st page of your syllabus.

I’d like to introduce you to the rest of the course staff: (Syllabus)

The text is Molecular Biology of the Cell, by Bruce Alberts and co-workers.

It’s very up to date and has excellent support media, which we’ll talk about later.

The Lab Manual will be sold at the student union bookstore, and we’ll let you know when it is available. By the way, labs will begin the week of Sept 11.

As your syllabus says, this is an advanced course in the molecular and structural bases of cell function, with an emphasis on the integrated functions of whole cells.

We will assume you have had the prerequisites: A sophomore-level cell biology course like 230, Genetics, and organic chemistry. I will accept Biochemistry as a substitute for 230, but you may have to do some extra reading.

In general, I’ll start with introductory material that you may have had before, and them move into more advanced material. We will emphasize the experimental methods of Cell and Mol. Biology and the evidence behind the facts.

We ‘re in the midst of a paradigm shift in Cell & Mol. Biology:

1. Biology was observational.
2. Cell Biology led the way in Hypothesis driven experimentation.
3. Mol. biology is going toward non-hypothesis data gathering.