Course Identification

Participants should possess knowledge of physical and organic chemistry at the level of introductory courses for Biology undergraduates, and basic Biochemistry and cell biology (e.g. At the level that Chemistry or Medicine students would take). There are no formal prerequisites, and we encourage students to obtain the necessary background from 1st year B.Sc. textbooks.

Notes:

(1) Lectures by Sarel Fleishman or Dan Tawfik

(2) The first week’s tutorial will not take place, as we will begin with an introductory lesson that week. We considered to start with the lesson on Tuesday, but this will ‘phase out’ the following weeks and create havoc. This, and the lesson we’ll miss owing to Channuka (14 January), means that have 2 hours less in the total count. We can, however, add some extra hour or two, if you like, some time in January and thus avoid over-compression.

Textbooks: The course is partly based on a recent textbook that aims to address the chemical basis of biomolecules:
 

The molecules of Life: Physical and Chemical Principles: John Kuriyan, Boyana Konforti & David Wemmer Garland Science, 2013. However, some parts of the course (e.g. chemical reactivity) are not covered.

A textbook suitable for the last parts: (‘Chemical reactivity and life’s chemistry’, and ‘Enzymatic catalysis’) is:

Structure and Mechanism in Protein Science:
A Guide to Enzyme Catalysis and Protein Folding.
Alan Fersht 1999. PDF can be downloaded for free (http://www.fersht.com/Structure.html)

Note, however, that the course’s aim is to integrate several discrete disciplines and areas, and as such, there are not textbooks that cover the course’s material as such.

Upon successful completion of this course students should be able, for example, to:

1. Formulate the kinetic and thermodynamic basis for the specificity and sensitivity of signal triggering of a cellular receptor.
2. Examine a crystal structure of a protein complex, identify the key interactions and their potential contributions to the protein's binding or enzymatic function.
3. Design experiments aimed at unraveling the molecular basis for a protein's structure and function and how these are connected with physiological functions.
4. Understand how chemical reactivity of a series of metabolites relates to the pathway's architecture, to the pathway's thermodynamics and kinetics, and to cellular energetics as a whole.
5. Provide probable explanations for the connections between mutations and a change in molecular activity.

The course is partly based on a recent textbook that had been tailored to meet the above-described goals:
The molecules of Life: Physical and Chemical Principles: John Kuriyan, Boyana Konforti & David Wemmer Garland Science, 2013. However, some parts of the course (e.g. chemical reactivity) are not covered.