Teaching

The exercises are described in Feig, AL and Jabri, E. (2002) Incorporation of Bioinformatics Exercises into the Undergraduate Biochemistry Curriculum. Biochem. and Mol. Biol. Ed. 30, 224 – 231. The exercises walk students through the analysis of an unknown protein - from initial identification through mass spectrometric methods to molecular visualization of the 3-dimensional structure. The web site for these exercises is currently being revised to accommodate the shift from CHIME to JMOL and some other recent advances in the area. After the revisions are complete, a link to the web site will be added to this page.

C483 is a one–semester biochemistry course for non–majors. I have taught the course 3 times in the last 5 years. The course is about 80% biology majors, 15% chemistry majors and 5% other. Enrollments ranged from 50 students the first time I taught the course to a high of 230 in Spring 2006. This course is a survey of biochemistry including the structure and function of biological macromolecules, enzyme catalysis, metabolism and biological information transfer. The students use bioinformatics datamining projects to help integrate the course material.

C484 is the first semester of a 2–term sequence required for Biochemistry majors. I have taught the course 3 times in the last 5 years. Enrollment hovers around 75 students/year. This course surveys the structures and properties of the major biological molecules and their cellular function. The curriculum includes biological catalysis and an introduction to metabolism focusing on glycolysis, the TCA Cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. The students use bioinformatics datamining projects to help integrate the course material.

C487 is an intensive undergraduate laboratory course that teaches students basic methodologies used in biochemistry including: spectrophotmetric assays, gel electrophoresis, column chromatography, protein purification, enzymology, PCR, and molecular cloning. The course is writing intensive, providing students instruction on effective scientific writing. Students also develop skills in data presentation and the design of effective graphics images around which their lab reports must be organized.

C581 was a biochemistry course designed for first–semester Ph.D. students in Biological Chemistry and Biology. I taught this course once with an enrollment of about 35 students. The course was phased out in 2002 and replaced with an alternative sequence of courses. My section of the course focused on the methodologies and approaches for studying biomolecular interactions and an introduction to biological catalysis. There was also a section on bioinformatics tools for database mining.

B501 is a graduate level biochemistry course taken by first–semester Ph.D. students in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics and Microbiology. I taught this course twice, the first time in Fall 2003. Enrollment is typically 30 - 35 students. My portion of the curriculum introduced nucleic acid structure and nucleic acid protein complexes. I then taught the principles of biochemical processes and the function of large biomolecular machines through discussions of replication, transcription, eukaryotic RNA processing and mRNA quality control and surveillance. Topics such as translation, protein folding, post–translational modification, membrane transport, DNA repair, and signal transduction were covered in other sections of the course.

B502 is a required 8–week course for first semester Ph.D. students in biochemistry. I taught the course once (Fall 2003). This small seminar course (6 – 10 students) uses both good and bad examples from the literature to promote careful reading of journal articles. Students are challenged to find flaws in prominent papers and dissect the experiments in such a way that they learn to be critical consumers of the scientific literature.

B504 is a stand–alone course in mechanistic enzymology designed for Biochemistry graduate students. I have taught the course twice with enrollments of 9 and 21 students in the first and second years respectively. The course teaches the students the fundamentals of enzyme catalysis and the experimental tools to approach mechanistic analysis of biological problems. The course culminates in the development of an independent research proposal on a topic the student selects.
(course web site)

Feig, AL and Jabri, E. (2002) Incorporation of Bioinformatics Exercises into the Undergraduate Biochemistry Curriculum. Biochem. and Mol. Biol. Ed. 30, 224 – 231. [PDF]