Course Prerequisites

Undergraduates taking BIOL 414 will be expected to have passed BIOL 302 (Molecular and General Genetics) and BIOL 303 (Cell Biology) or equivalent with a grade of C or better. Note that in accord with department policy, students who have not completed these requirements will receive no grade for the course. If you are at all confused on this issue see me.

Course Web Site

http://thunder.biosci.umbc.edu/classes/biol414/spring2007

Focus

This class will concern eukaryotic molecular genetics, that is, the molecular understanding of genetic information transfer in eukaryotes. The major topics covered during the course will include:

• the process of translation including an function of initiation and elongation factors
• translational control mechanisms
• transcription initiation and elongation and associated factors
• control of transcription by chromatin modification
• mRNA quality control
• the role of non-coding RNAs in gene regulation
  

We will read and discuss papers from the primary research literature to explore these topics. There is no textbook intended for use in the course. You may want to refer to any general reference you may own that was required in a previous course, such as "Genes VII" (Lewin, Oxford University Press); this may be used as background material for the lectures if necessary.

As an alternative to the textbook, the author has developed a commercial website, http://www.ergito.com/. The web site includes much of the content of Genes VIII. I make no claims about the value of this website, but it could be a useful source of background information. Access to the website requires a $39.00 annual fee; the book retails for over $120.00.

What is molecular genetics?

The course will focus on molecular genetics which is a sub-discipline of molecular biology that is concerned with the process of information transfer in cells. Essentially, this amounts to analysis of the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA ⇒ RNA ⇒ protein, although it can also encompass other allied processes affecting information transfer.

The definition of this area of molecular biology is controversial. Some biologists believe that molecular biology is simply a toolkit of techniques. The validity of this argument is suspect; look at the first issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology and you will find few if any techniques described with which you are familiar. Rather than being simply a toolkit, the discipline of molecular biology embodies an approach to analyzing biological problems. Biochemists attempt to break down a biological process into its component parts and reassemble it in whole or in part in vitro. By contrast, molecular biologists attempt to use their many tools to analyze the process in living cells or in complex cell extracts without resorting to purifying those components. The divisions between molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry and cell biology are blurred when these other disciplines adopt the tools of molecular biology and vice versa.

Reading materials

I will be posting lists of assigned readings and useful review papers on this web site. It will be necessary to have read the papers before class. Links to all of the papers to be read in PDF format will be available on this web site. Most links will be to the original on the journal web sites. Some will be available from the class web site; for those, you will require a password to open the PDF files (because of copyright restrictions). You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to be able to view and print the files.

Writing

Writing will consitute a major focus of the course. The writing assignments will come in a variety of forms:

• Students will be asked to write short responses to the assigned readings at the beginning of classes during which we will discuss the assigned papers. These will take about 5-10 minutes and will be collected on completion.
  
• There will be one formal written project assigned during the semester. As the semester progresses, students will be required to identify and write short abstracts of papers that will be used as references for this project. These abstracts will be due on a weekly basis, as indicated on the class schedule page.
• For those students enrolled in BIOL614 for graduate credit, the projects will be slightly more complex, requiring a greater depth of analysis.

Requirements, Prerequisites and Grading

Requirements: Grades for the class will be assigned based on assessment of the written assignments, exams and class participation. Each assignment will be given a grade on a 100 point scale. The grades will be awarded on the basis of a normal scale where 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D and below 60 = F. The final letter grades will be awarded based on this scale.

Calculation of the final course grade will be based on five assignments (the journal, two writing assignment projects and two examinations) and class participation. The weighting of these assignments will be: