What follows are descriptions of selected elective courses that trainees may take as options to fulfill Graduate School and MDTP major or minor requirements. The list is not comprehensive, but provides examples.
Bact 607, Advanced Microbial Genetics, Course directors Culbertson, Roberts, 3 credits.
The course purpose is to enable beginning graduate students to read and understand the literature on genetic and molecular biology of bacteria and lower eukaryotes. The course will utilize both standard lecture format as well as group discussion of primary literature. It will cover basic topics of genetic analysis, emphasizing methodology as well as important discoveries. While the course will address all major topics of importance, it will focus particularly on those most likely to be utilized by students in their research or on areas which are of particularly broad biological importance. Where appropriate, the instructors will emphasize the major biological and genetic similarities and differences between bacteria and lower eukaryotes. Strengths and weaknesses of the available methodologies available to these two classes of organisms will also be addressed. Approximately 2/3 of the course will focus on prokaryotic systems with the remainder devoted to lower eukaryotes.
Bact 612, Prokaryotic Maolecular Biology, Course director Gourse, 3 credits.
This course is designed for graduate students with some background in prokaryotic molecular biology. The course focuses on molecular aspects of bacterial genetics, concentrating on the structure of DNA and its interactions with proteins, replication, recombination, transposition, transcription, translation, and regulation of gene activity.
Bact 725, Microbial Physiology and Diversity, Course director Goodrich-Blair, 3 credits.
This course focuses on molecular genetics and has three primary goals. One, to introduce students to some of the fascinating life styles of microbes. Two, to study how microbes use diverse strategies to solve similar problems, and similar strategies to conquer diverse problems. Three, to provide a forum for students to read, understand, and communicate primary literature. Topics will be drawn from four main areas: 1) microbial responses to environmental stimuli; 2) microbial communication and interaction; 3) microbial social structures; 4) microbe-host interactions
Bact 726, Gene Regulation in Prokaryotes, Course director Landick, 3 credits.
This course explores the various strategies that have evolved to regulate gene expression in microbes. The greatest emphasis in the course is placed on understanding the diversity of regulatory strategies that have evolved and the mechanisms that underlie these strategies. Bact 726 has the following goals for students: Acquire knowledge about mechanisms of gene regulation. Learn to read, understand, and criticize the primary scientific literature. Learn to formulate and discuss ideas. Practice effective oral and written presentation of ideas. Lectures in the course introduce a regulatory system and are followed by class discussions of research papers investigating different aspects of the regulatory system. Discussions of research papers are led by students (in pairs).
Biochem 601, Protein and Enzyme Structure and Function, Course directors Holden and Raines, 2 credits.
Protein structure and dynamics. Protein folding. Physical organic chemistry of enzymatic catalysis. Analysis of enzyme kinetics and receptor-ligand interactions. Enzymatic reaction mechanisms.
Path 709, Immunopathology, Course director Sandor, 2 credits.
The course involves lectures given by different faculty experts and student presentations of current papers relevant to the lectures. This course explores the immune response in health and disease. There will be a focus on malfunctions of immune system like immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, allergies. The basic mechanisms by which immunity protects against infectious disease will be explored and practical uses of immunity to facilitate transplantation and protection against tumors will be discussed. Each student is required to present and critique relevant research papers and to complete an open book exam solving a set of problems associated with the lectures.
Path 750, Cellular & Molecular Biology / Pathology, Course director Rapraeger, 3 credits.
The emphasis is on our current understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms. Where possible, human diseases are used to illustrate the outcome at the organismal level of defects in these mechanisms. Lectures will draw from the current research literature and cover topics such as intracellular protein and vesicle sorting, cell cycle, intracellular signaling, cell adhesion, cell migration, and growth. Current papers are discussed during in-class discussion.
Stat 571, Statistical Methods for Biosciences I, Course director Nordheim, 4 credits.
Descriptive statistics, distributions, one-and two-sample normal inference, power, one-way ANOVA, simple linear regression, categorical data, non-parametric methods; underlying assumptions and diagnostic work.
Oncology 675, Advanced or Special Topics in Cancer Research: Protein Purification, Course director Burgess, 2 credits.
This is primarily a lecture course consisting of 27 lectures, 2 half-semester exams, some take-home problems, and a paper on a topic relating to the course. Goals of the course are: 1) to introduce the most important and useful concepts of protein purification and handling, 2) to help students to develop an intuition about how to work with proteins–so that they can "think like a protein", and 3) to guide students to ongoing sources of information and resources. Lecture topics include: Introduction-Protein purification overview; Properties of proteins/types of separation methods; Assays - following an enzyme through a purification; Protein characterization; Protein inactivation and stabilization/solution components; Purification strategy/starting materials/preparing cell extracts; Precipitation methods; Computer simulation of protein purification; Phase partitioning; Dialysis, desalting, concentration, ultrafiltration; Preparative electrophoresis, chromatofocusing, isoelectric focusing, capillary electrophoresis; Purification of membrane proteins/glycoproteins; Column chromatography – theory and concepts; Sizing – gel filtration chromatography; Ion exchange, Affinity, Immunoaffinity, and DNA affinity chromatography; HPLC: Columns and hardware, theory, methods development, applications; Micropurification by eluting from SDS gels; Overproduction of cloned gene products; Purification of insoluble overproduced proteins; Engineering proteins for ease of purification and characterization; Recent advances in studying protein-protein interactions; Immobilizing and using enzymes in bioreactors; Scale-up considerations/related resources, courses, and facilities.
