Biology Courses

This laboratory class is structured around a biochemical question of relevance to the research community. Students will design and generate mutants of an enzyme to test hypotheses about its mechanism and kinetics. The course consists of three sections: molecular biology, protein biochemistry, and structural biology. In the first section, students the learn the principles of DNA manipulation, cloning, mutagenesis, and DNA sequencing and apply them to design and generate mutant constructs of the protein of interest. In the second section, students learn the principles of heterologous expression of proteins in bacteria, protein purification, SDS-PAGE, protein quantification, and kinetic analysis of enzyme activity. These methods are applied to test the students' hypotheses by assaying the activity of their mutant enzymes. The final section of the course introduces students to concepts of structural biology including protein crystallization, x-ray diffraction, and computer modeling of protein structures. Fulfills the upper-level laboratory requirement for the Biology major. Prerequisites: Chem 262 and either Bio 451 or Bio 4810/Chem 481. Suggested to be taken concurrently with Bio4820/Chem482.
Course Attributes: FA NSMBU SCIAR NSMAS NSM