Fundamentals of Chemical Biology
Spanning the fields of biology, chemistry, and engineering, this class introduces students to the principles of chemical biology and the application of chemical and physical methods and reagents to the study and manipulation of biological systems. Topics include nucleic acid structure, recognition, and manipulation; protein folding and stability, and proteostasis; bioorthogonal reactions and activity-based protein profiling; chemical genetics and small-molecule inhibitor screening; fluorescent probes for biological analysis and imaging; and unnatural amino acid mutagenesis. The class will also discuss the logic of dynamic post-translational modification reactions with an emphasis on chemical biology approaches for studying complex processes including glycosylation, phosphorylation, and lipidation. Students taking the graduate version are expected to explore the subject in greater depth.
Spring 2016 · Biological Chemistry II
This course is an advanced treatment of biochemical mechanisms that underlie biological processes. Topics include macromolecular machines such as the ribosome, the proteasome, fatty acid synthases as a paradigm for polyketide synthases and non-ribosomal polypeptide synthases, and polymerases. Emphasis will be given to the experimental methods used to unravel how these processes fit into the cellular context as well as the coordinated regulation of these processes.
Readings
- Voet, Voet, and Pratt. “Lipid Metabolism.” Chapter 20 in Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level . 4th ed. Wiley, 2015, pp. 657–64, 678–81, and 700–709. ISBN: 9780470547847.
- Voet, Voet, and Pratt. Chapters 5, 28, and 29 in Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level . 4th ed. Wiley, 2015. ISBN: 9780470547847. (Introductory Biochemistry textbook that covers purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis and deoxynucleotide biosynthesis.)
- There is no required textbook for this course. However, a general biochemistry book is strongly recommended for background material, such as:
- Voet, D., J. Voet, and C. Pratt. Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level . 4th ed. Wiley, 2015. ISBN: 9780470547847.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 7.08[J] Subject meets with 7.80 Prereq: ( Biology (GIR) , 5.13 , and ( 5.07[J] or 7.05 )) or permission of instructor U (Spring) 4-0-8 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2016
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.