[biochemer]

This is a course only for Biochem students in the Molecular Biology/Biomed specialization. Health science students that are in the biochemisty specialization, as well as Arts and Science students (Biochem specialization) can also take the course. The 2 profs that teach the course are Dr. David Andrews and Dr. Brian Leber.

Course Breakdown:
20%- 2 Midterms (10% each)
20%- Exam
20%- Participation and Presentations
40%- Wiki site

Midterms
Don't be fooled by how much the midterms are worth. They are hard! You have one midterm for the material covered by each prof. They basically spend 3-4 weeks brutally analyzing a paper of their choice (based on a topic in their field of research), and then give you a midterm based on that paper. The paper reviewed in class introduces you to the main techniques used and theories proposed. However, the midterms are not as straight forward. The format of the tests is short answer; anywhere from 2-6 figures which you must explain in detail. For example, you will be shown a Western Blot and asked to interpret what the results mean. Usually if one of the midterms is extremely hard and has a low average, the other will be a bit easier.

Wiki site
This is the big chunk of your mark in this course. You form a group of 4 at the beginning of the semester and choose a topic from a pre-determined list. Once it is approved, you must stick to it. Each of the 4 members then chooses a recent paper that relates to the field. There are some restrictions (which journals you can choose from, length of paper, date of publishing, etc). Then your job is to create a wiki site and describes the findings of each of your papers and how the 4 papers relate not only to each other but to the field in general. Each member must also fully describe 3 figures from their papers. What you want is to have a balance between clearly and concisely explaining the figure (for the benefit of your classmates) and to have a detailed explanation about the methods and the findings from the figure (as this is what your mark will depend on). It is a wiki site, and so everything is online from uploading images to adding borders and fonts. You get to be as creative (or dull) as you want. Some people incorporated flash images/videos, youtube videos, etc. If you know how to do html coding you can spice up your wiki page making it even better. Again, just so it won't hurt your mark, you should have a balance between creative and dull (i.e. don't make it so that there are no links or images, but don't go overboard with it).

Presentation
You have 2-3 presentations throughout the term. The first two are very small, just "up-to-date" presentations to show your progress. The final one is based on your finished wiki site and is probably worth the most. You only present in front of 3-4 other groups (so 12-16 people), as the groups are split between the professors.

Exam
Your exam is only 4 questions. The format is similar to the midterms, but guess where the figures are coming from...that's right, your wiki sites. 2 of the 4 questions are about figures from your own group members (so there's a chance that your figures might end up on the exam!). This part shouldn't be too bad. The other two questions come from any of the other groups' wiki sites. This is why when you make your wiki site, you want to make sure you explain everything clearly and with the appropriate amount of detail, otherwise your classmates will HATE you when they're studying for the exam. Overall the exam isn't too bad, much better than the tests.

Overall, this was one of the best courses I've taken at Mac, even though I didn't do as well as I wanted. You will become an expert at analyzing Western Blots and Immunoprecipitation gels by the end of this course and you'll learn a bit of internet coding while doing the wiki.