Biochemistry (academic course)

Biochemistry was a year-long academic course I took during my undergraduate years at Oregon State University. It was a sequence professional course to meet the requirements of majors in Biochemistry and Biophysics.

The course was divided into three terms and there was also separate courses for the laboratory.

• Professors: Dr. Michael I. Schimerlik, Dr. Tory M. Hagen, Dr. Christopher K. Mathews, and Dr. George D. Pearson.
• Textbook: Biochemistry, Christopher K. Mathews, K. E. van Holde, and Kevin G. Ahern, Addison Wesley Longman, San Fransisco, 3rd Edition (2000).

Biochemistry I

Energetics of Life (Thermodynamics, Chemical Reactions and Equilibrium), Nucleic Acids (Properties, Structure, Function), Protein Structure, Protein Function and Evolution, Protein Dynamics, Carbohydrates.

Keywords

Chemistry of amino acids and proteins; specialized proteins, including heme proteins and muscle proteins; enzymes, including kinetics and mechanisms; bioenergetics, thermodynamics, and biological oxidation and reduction; carbohydrate chemistry; introduction to metabolism; glycolysis; glycogen metabolism; gluconeogenesis.

Biochemistry II

Lipids, Membranes, Cellular Transport, Enzymes, Carbohydrate Metabolism, Oxidative Processes, Photosynthesis, Lipid Metabolism, Metabolism of Nitrogenous Compounds, Nucleotide Metabolism, Metabolic Coordination/Control/Signal Transduction.

Keywords

Bioenergetics; lipids and membranes; energy-yielding metabolic pathways, oxidative phosphorylation, and photosynthesis; chemistry and metabolism of lipids, steroids, and eicosanoids; membrane structure, hormone action; metabolic regulation; amino acid and nitrogen metabolism; nucleotide metabolism.

Biochemistry III

Information Copying (Replication), Restriction, Repair, Recombination, Rearrangement, Amplification, Transcription, Translation, Expression.

Keywords

Nucleic acid structure; replication, transcription, translation; regulation of gene expression; DNA repair, biochemistry of specialized cell functions; oncogenes and growth control.

Biochemistry I-Laboratory

Fundamentals of biochemical methodology: buffers, spectrophotometry, gel electrophoresis, thin-layer chromatography, protein purification, enzyme kinetics, peptide structure, preparative ultracentrifugation, scientific report writing.

Textbook: Fundamental Laboratory Approaches for Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Ninfa and Ballou.

Biochemistry II-Laboratory

Research techniques in molecular genetics and nucleic acid biochemistry: Plasmid isolation, restriction analysis, molecular cloning, PCR, site-directed mutagenesis, overexpression of proteins in E. coli, purification of recombinant proteins, analysis of proteins by SDS-PAGE and western blotting, computer-aided DNA sequence analysis, nucleic acid hybridization.

Biochemistry III-Laboratory

Microdetection, quantitation and communication. Focus upon radioisotopes.