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Cell Biology explores the fundamental workings of the eukaryotic cell, placing its principal emphases upon the structure and function of biological membranes, the cytoskeleton, the pathways of signal transduction, and the organelles of the endomembrane system. Students who are also interested in details of gene regulation and the pathways of metabolism will find that BIOL-325 (Molecular Biology) and CHEM-414 (Biochemistry) complement the topics in this course with little duplication. Optional laboratory credit is provided by Methods in Biochemistry and Cell Biology (BCMB-310), which also confers laboratory credit to accompany Biochemistry.
The goal of this course is for you to learn more than merely facts (though indeed there will be many facts to learn), but more importantly to develop skills of "cell biological reasoning." To that end, frequent emphasis will be placed in lecture upon the experimental approach to understanding the workings of cells; and examinations and quizzes will contain numerous questions that expect you to draw conclusions from experimental data or to predict the outcomes of experimental manipulations.
Rather than aiming for superficial breadth of coverage, BIOL-307 focuses instead upon a smaller set of topics, treating each in enough detail to let you to build a sound, integrated understanding of the structural and regulatory complexity of life at the level of the cell. We will begin this course where your introductory study of cells and molecules left off - we won't spend time repeating what you should have learned in Core. Appropriate to the intended level of the course, the text is one of the standards used in cell biology courses at the graduate level. Expect to be challenged.
| Topic 1 | Protein Structure: Conformation and Specificity of Ligand Binding | |
| Topic 2 | Composition and Structure of Biological Membranes | |
| Topic 3 | Membrane Fluidity: Origins and Consequences | |
| Topic 4 | The Cyclic AMP System plus Allosteric and Covalent Protein Modification | |
| Topic 5 | The Phosphoinositide System and Calcium as a Metabolic Regulator | |
| Topic 6 | Receptor Tyrosine Kinases: Ras Proteins and the MAP Kinase Cascade | |
| Topic 7 | Membrane Transport via Diffusion: Pores and Carriers | |
| Topic 8 | Active Transport | |
| Topic 9 | The Role of Proton Gradients in Energy-Requiring Processes | |
| Topic 10 | The Respiratory Membrane | |
| Topic 11 | The Photosynthetic Membrane | |
| Topic 12 | Basic Biochemistry of Actin and Myosin | |
| Topic 13 | "Crawling" Motility in Animal Cells | |
| Topic 14 | The Role of Microtubules in Motility and Cell Structure | |
| Topic 15 | The Mitotic Spindle | |
| Topic 16 | Regulation of the Nuclear Division Cycle | |
| Topic 17 | Apoptosis: Programmed Cell Death | |
| Topic 18 | Post-translational Transport of Proteins across Membranes | |
| Topic 19 | Co-translational Transport of Proteins across ER Membranes | |
| Topic 20 | The Golgi Apparatus: Glycosylation and Sorting | |
| Topic 21 | Regulation of Vesicle Traffic | |
| Topic 22 | Endocytosis | |
| Topic 22 | Cell Walls |