Introduction & Background

Overview of the course

Review & Methods in Molecular Biology

Review of the critical properties of nucleic acids

Summary of Bacterial transcription

Molecular Methods

How to design an experiment

What are controls?

Entrez / Pubmed

Reading assignments, Lecture notes

Transcription regulation in eukaryotes

Chapter 10 Eukaryotic RNA polymerases and their promoters

Chapter 11 General transcription factors in eukaryotes

Chapter 12 Transcription activators in eukaryotes

Chapter 13 Chromatin structure and its effects on transcription

Exam 1 occurs about here

Reading assignments, Lecture notes

mRNA processing, translational regulation & transgenics

Chapter 14 mRNA processing I: Splicing

Chapter 15 mRNA processing II: Capping and polyadenylation

Chapter 16 Other mRNA processing events

Chapter 17 The mechanism of translation I: Initiation

Chapter 18 The mechanism of translation II: Elongation and Termination

small portions of Chapter 19 Ribosomes and transfer RNA

Chapter 23 Transposition

Exam 2 will occur about here

Transgenics, Genomics Bioinformatics

Chapter 5 Transgenics

Chapter 24 Genomics and Proteomics

Algorithms of Bioinformatics: Sequence databases, Dynamic programming, Sequence alignments, PAM & Blosum62 matrices, Needleman-Wunsch, Blast, Gene prediction. We may also cover: Phylogenetics, UPGMA, Parsimony and Clustal.

Moleclar Biology of HIV

Exam 3 will occur at the end of the course.

A comprehensive final will occur during Finals week.