College of Chemistry Course Guide

CHEM 135 - Chemical Biology (3 Units)

Course Overview

Summary

Chemistry 135 is an introductory course to Chemical Biology, required for chemical biology majors and also commonly taken by ChemE Majors with a biotech emphasis. The course is taught from the perspective of a chemist and focuses more on mechanisms and chemical reasoning than MCB 102 (biochemistry). This course does not have a lab component ordiscussion section, and is primarily lecture based.

Terms offered

Fall semester only.

Prerequisites

  • Bio 1A (Required)*
  • Chem 12B or 3B or knowledge about carbonyl chemistry (Required)

*Depending on the professor, this may or may not be a prerequisite. Matt Francis, for instance, emphasized that Chem 3/12B is more important than Bio 1A.

Additional Notes

Topics Covered

  • Protein Structure
  • Enzyme Kinetics and Mechanisms
  • Glucose and Lipid Metabolism
  • Mechanisms of Glycolysis and the Citric Acid Cycle
  • Terpene and Steroid Biosynthesis
  • Plasmids and Protein Expression
  • Transcription
  • Protein Biosynthesis
  • Carbohydrate Structure and Metabolism

Workload

Coursework

  • Problem sets every ~2 weeks
  • 3 midterms and a final

Time Commitment

3 hours of lecture per week. 5-8 hours per problem set.

Choosing the Course

When to take

The class is predominantly juniors and seniors, as this is an upper-division elective. Chemical biology majors typically take it in the Fall of Junior year. This class is not time-intensive (in terms of spending time in class) since there is no discussion or lab, but do treat it like a typical 3-unit technical course in terms of workload.

What Next?

Additional Comments and Tips

This course is a great choice for those wanting to take an upper division biology-related course that isn’t pure biology. Would highly recommend!




Written by: Emmy Tian

Last edited: Spring 2018