MICROBIOLOGY: THE MOLECULAR BASIS FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND THEIR TREATMENT

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

BIOS 353 is a one-semester course that surveys a representative group of bacterial and viral infectious diseases and the medical countermeasures used to defeat them or in some cases just keep them in check. The course begins with a brief history of how infectious diseases have shaped human history and progresses to present day challenges including emerging pathogens both natural and man-made. We will do deep dives of several important pandemic diseases to understand their epidemiological contexts, pathogenesis and disease states. We will then examine how vaccines, antiviral and antimicrobial strategies work to protect human health at the molecular level. Importantly, we will then examine how molecular evolution provides adaptation to various biomedical interventions and why the fight against infectious diseases cannot be easily won. Prerequisite BIOS 301 (may be taken concurrently) Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: BIOS 553 .