Department:  Biological Sciences
Instructor:  Dr. Lynne Quarmby, B-8240
Course Prerequisites:  BICH 222 or permission of instructor
Recommended Text:  Molecular Biology of the Cell (3^rd Ed) by Alberts et al. OR any comparable recent cell biology text.
 

Cell biology is one of the hottest areas of scientific research and my primary goal in teaching this course is to help you understand what all of the excitement is about.

This will be fundamentally a lecture course, but it will include several discussion sessions. There will be a guided and thorough reading of one or two recent papers from the primary literature for each of the three sections of the course. In addition, I will provide textbook references for those who require background reading in specific areas.

A critical component of the course is to develop an understanding of the experimental basis of our knowledge about cells.
 

Topics to be covered include:

1.    Movement and the Molecular Basis of Motion.

What are the various ways in which cells move? How do they get to where the food is better or to where the body as been invaded by bacteria? And what are the various ways that cells move stuff? For example, how do transcription factors get into the nucleus? How is the direction controlled? How do neurons get the stuff of synapses from the cell body all that long way to the synapse? This section of the course will cover molecular motors, transport into and out of organelles, and vesicular transport; we will learn about cells that crawl, cells that swim, and cells that glide.

2.    Cell Cycle

How do cells manage that fantastic trick of lining up all of their chromosomes and then, at precisely the right moment, pull one of each to each side? How do they know when to divide and when to differentiate? This section of the course will explore the state of our molecular understanding of these processes and how they are regulated (potential and real targets of anti-cancer therapy). 


3.    Signal Transduction

How is the physical and chemical information about the environment translated into the biochemical language of the cell? How do cells interpret the information and what do they do with it? This section of the course will cover membrane potential (what it is, why it matters and how it works). Weâll track signals from ion channels and receptors through cascades of signalling proteins, including kinases, adaptors, G proteins and more, all the way to the cellular response.

Distribution of Marks:

Undergraduates:  There will be three exams worth 30% each. The final 10% of the grade will be allocated to participation in class discussions. Students who score >80% on each of the first two exams will have the option of writing a short paper in lieu of the third exam.

Graduate Students: There will be a term paper worth 75% of the grade. The final 25% of the grade will be based on class participation, including a 15-minute oral presentation.