Has anyone taken BIOCHEM 3Y03? It's taught by Dr. Zhorov for the upcoming semester. Does anyone have any insights on the course? or an updated course calender?

Thanks.

You can find all Biochem's 2012/2013 course outlines here.

I took it in last term. It's a fun course that I'd recommend taking for anyone who can. The course is relatively light, with much of the marks being based on assignments and the rest on a final exam.

The course, as the name suggests, covers Computational Biochemistry in a sense where you study and go over various ways to conduct research on proteins using your computer. That includes the use of databases, software, etc.

The assignments give you reins to a random protein from PDB, and you "play" around with it, changing residues, stabilizing/destabilizing, etc. and you show and explain what changes occur and why.

Bonus points go to the course for its applicability to graduate studies.

I personally loved the course. I also took it last term. It's not your typical university course because it is more "hands-on" than theoretical, because you spend most of your time on the assignments and the final project. You basically use a software called ZMM (designed by Dr. Zhorov himself) and you make different kinds of mutations on a protein-drug complex and use Pymol to visualize the changes brought by the mutation. Then you analyze the effects of these mutations on how well the drug interacts with the protein in terms of H-bond energies, van der Waals energies, electrostatic energies, etc.

What I liked the most about the course is the small class size (16-18 students took it last term) with 3 TA's responsible for teaching you how to use ZMM and marking your assignments. One TA is assigned to 5-6 students so you get a lot of help if you needed it.

What I don't like about the course is that it is a 3-hour lecture on a Friday afternoon. This, coupled with Dr. Zhorov's soft spoken voice when teaching, is guaranteed to make you quite sleepy.

It was a great course. I definitely recommend it. I took it last term too. Similar to ilyasviel I enjoyed the "hands-on" sense of this course and the small class size.

There are times (like the final project) where things are frustrating because things don't seem to work. For example, issues with ZMM or you can't find a mutation which makes expected results. However there was always help available whether it was classmates or the TAs. I'm not sure if it was just my year, but everyone in our class was close, friendly and helpful.

The exam was odd though. Lots of random questions. Memorize everything from the notes. Sometimes there were questions which related to the material, but there would be no way of knowing what the right answer was.

Grades wise, I think they try to give everyone a reasonable grade. I think the class average was probably in the 80s.

How was the workload for this course in comparison to others?