BIOC460 What's New

Announcements
Updated on: 5/10/08 at 3:30 PM

May 10, 2008

For your planning purposes, there are 3 hour exams (Wed., June 4; Mon. June 23; and Thurs. July 10), and 3 10-minute quizzes (Tues. May 27, Thurs. June 12, and Tues. July 1).
To access lecture notes in this course, you will need a username and a password because of all the copyrighted material in the notes. The username and password are posted (under "news") on the course D2L site, and are on the first-day syllabus/handout.
Many of the lecture notes are already posted -- links are on Lecture Notes page (accessed from top of this page). The PDF version is for printing; powerpoints will be used in class, with occasional links to molecular structures.
There will be a special general chemistry review session covering concepts of chemical equilibrium, pH, pK_a, buffers, etc. outside of class at the very beginning of the course. To make it possible for as many students as possible to attend, the SAME REVIEW will be given TWO DIFFERENT TIMES, right after class on the first two days of class:
Monday May 14 (10:00-11:00 pm, CHEM 111, regular classroom), and
Tuesday May. 15 (10:00-11:00 pm, CHEM 111, regular classroom).
Don't come twice! Attendance at this review is not "required", since it covers material you learned in general chemistry, but note that understanding of what is covered in the review IS required in this course, and the review may be the most painless mechanism for being sure you know the material and can work with it, rather than trying to review it entirely on your own. We take the time to help you with this because experience suggests that without substantial review many students do not remember this elementary chemistry material well enough to work with it as they must in biochemistry. It will be expected starting on Wednesday 5/21 in class that students will be thoroughly familiar with this review material, since it is fundamental in biochemistry. The contents of the review are mainly included in this PDF, which is also linked on the lecture notes page: gen chem review. It is also expected that you will remember (from junior high or high school algebra) how to use logarithms (base 10 and base e). Those concepts will not be reviewed in this course, but there's a bare-bones reminder review posted at logarithms review, also linked on lecture notes page.
Most students find Bioc 460 to be a very challenging course. The course staff will do all we can to assist you in learning biochemistry, but a lot of studying on your part will be required -- DON'T GET BEHIND!
Old exams and their answer keys are linked at the bottom of the "Study Guides" page for you to see the kinds of questions asked, and to self-assess your understanding, but of course exams are only "spot checks" of what you will be expected to have learned.
Note that by Wed. 5/21 you will also be expected to have read chapter 2, pp. 25-34, and to have learned the chemical structures of the 20 amino acids commonly found in proteins. Besides these textbook pages and the lecture notes (not yet posted), there is an EXCELLENT website (UA Biology Project) for learning about amino acids and seeing structural and chemical relationships.
Starting before the end of the first Tuesday class (5/20), we should be discussing amino acids. NOTE: You'll be responsible for the structures and chemistry of all 20 of the side chains of the amino acids commonly found in peptides and proteins, so don't put off learning them.
There should be a few copies of the textbook (Berg, Tymoczko and Stryer, Biochemistry, 6th edition) on reserve in the Science and Engineering Library for your convenience if you want to read the assigned material on campus. There should also be copies on reserve of the "Student Companion" (study guide to accompany Biochemistry 6th edition), by Gumport et al., which is not recommended for purchase, but does have detailed solutions to the end-of-chapter problems in the textbook. Those solutions are in the back section of the study guide, the section with the gray-shaded edges of pages.