Hey, has anyone out there taken these courses:

Mol Biol 3II3 - Molecular Genetics of Eukaryotes
Mol Biol 3V03 - Techniques in Molecular Genetics ?

I can't find any course reviews and would really appreciate hearing some first-hand experience. How was the workload, difficulty, material, prof, final exam? Would you recommend these courses?

Thanks!!

Originally Posted by marcie

Hey, has anyone out there taken these courses:

Mol Biol 3II3 - Molecular Genetics of Eukaryotes
Mol Biol 3V03 - Techniques in Molecular Genetics ?

I can't find any course reviews and would really appreciate hearing some first-hand experience. How was the workload, difficulty, material, prof, final exam? Would you recommend these courses?

Thanks!!

3II3 was taught by Campos and Morarescu for the first time. I thought the organization of the material was terrible. Their slides were terrible due to last minute changes, changes after the lecture, multiple identical slides scattered through the lecture. Hopefully for the students taking it next year it'll be more organized. The material itself was alright, mutations were kind of general but campos' developmental part was interesting for me. You learn how certain genes affect development. Workload was probably the lightest out of the courses I took that semester.

3V03 is a lab course "taught" by Finan last year. He just teaches us the theory and we "apply" it to the course. I had no idea what I was doing during the labs, I was basically just following directions but each time I had to write a lab report everything came together and I thought it was pretty cool. The techniques themselves are somewhat outdated if one can afford the machines, but I think it's important to learn the classical experiments. The workload is ridiculous for this course, lab reports take forever to write because of the research needed. I had the shortest lab reports at around 17-20 pages but my friends were writing like 25 page lab reports. There were 4 in total. Just make sure you stay on top of the work, do the research early and don't leave things to the last minute.

Originally Posted by jhan523

3II3 was taught by Campos and Morarescu for the first time. I thought the organization of the material was terrible. Their slides were terrible due to last minute changes, changes after the lecture, multiple identical slides scattered through the lecture. Hopefully for the students taking it next year it'll be more organized. The material itself was alright, mutations were kind of general but campos' developmental part was interesting for me. You learn how certain genes affect development. Workload was probably the lightest out of the courses I took that semester.

3V03 is a lab course "taught" by Finan last year. He just teaches us the theory and we "apply" it to the course. I had no idea what I was doing during the labs, I was basically just following directions but each time I had to write a lab report everything came together and I thought it was pretty cool. The techniques themselves are somewhat outdated if one can afford the machines, but I think it's important to learn the classical experiments. The workload is ridiculous for this course, lab reports take forever to write because of the research needed. I had the shortest lab reports at around 17-20 pages but my friends were writing like 25 page lab reports. There were 4 in total. Just make sure you stay on top of the work, do the research early and don't leave things to the last minute.

25 page lab reports? Oh crap. Not looking forward to that :p

Could you give any information on generally how those labs are structured? The quality of labs in bio I've found so far range widely from terrible to amazing, and I'm always distraught when lab marks are the balance between a 10 or 11/11 or 12 in a class due to the feeling of lab grades being a toss-up depending on how good or bad your TA's are, or how well/poorly the labs are designed..

I took Bio 2L03, Introduction to Experimental Design and I thought the labs were planned and executed very, very well. Generally we'd spend 1 lecture as an introduction to the theory relevant to the lab, and we'd have 2 weeks to do the lab (6 hours lab time, 3 hours a week) and write the report. We had two formal labs that had to be written and formatted as papers appear in the journal Nature. While it took a fair amount of work to do, I loved the fact that we at least had proper guidelines for what we were to hand in. There was no guesswork in what our reports were supposed to contain or what they were supposed to look like. It also helped that the TA's were very helpful, and that staying past the allotted lab time was allowed if necessary.

On the flipside, there was Bio 2A03, Animal Physiology. I hated these labs with a passion. I got over 90% on all 3 midterms AND the exam, and yet I got an 11 in the class because of the stupid labs. The labs never felt particularly connected to the course material in pacing, and the reports were terrible. They weren't overly long, but it was nearly impossible to figure out what we were supposed to include. The labs contained theory questions that were supposed to be answered in the Discussion section of our reports, but oftentimes these questions were not relevant to the experiment and it was *impossible* to answer these questions AND discuss the results of the experiment properly within the length limits. This jarring disconnect between theory questions and experiment interpretation made it especially hard to create any semblance of a stylistic flow to the writing (which is always worth marks...) The labs were never handed back in time, so it was impossible to learn from the mistakes of your previous paper. I also personally had a terrible TA, but I suppose to that end you win some, and you lose some.

I just realized I turned this post into a giant rant. <_< But yeah, how were the labs? :p

Originally Posted by Freak705

25 page lab reports? Oh crap. Not looking forward to that :p

Could you give any information on generally how those labs are structured? The quality of labs in bio I've found so far range widely from terrible to amazing, and I'm always distraught when lab marks are the balance between a 10 or 11/11 or 12 in a class due to the feeling of lab grades being a toss-up depending on how good or bad your TA's are, or how well/poorly the labs are designed..

I took Bio 2L03, Introduction to Experimental Design and I thought the labs were planned and executed very, very well. Generally we'd spend 1 lecture as an introduction to the theory relevant to the lab, and we'd have 2 weeks to do the lab (6 hours lab time, 3 hours a week) and write the report. We had two formal labs that had to be written and formatted as papers appear in the journal Nature. While it took a fair amount of work to do, I loved the fact that we at least had proper guidelines for what we were to hand in. There was no guesswork in what our reports were supposed to contain or what they were supposed to look like. It also helped that the TA's were very helpful, and that staying past the allotted lab time was allowed if necessary.

On the flipside, there was Bio 2A03, Animal Physiology. I hated these labs with a passion. I got over 90% on all 3 midterms AND the exam, and yet I got an 11 in the class because of the stupid labs. The labs never felt particularly connected to the course material in pacing, and the reports were terrible. They weren't overly long, but it was nearly impossible to figure out what we were supposed to include. The labs contained theory questions that were supposed to be answered in the Discussion section of our reports, but oftentimes these questions were not relevant to the experiment and it was *impossible* to answer these questions AND discuss the results of the experiment properly within the length limits. This jarring disconnect between theory questions and experiment interpretation made it especially hard to create any semblance of a stylistic flow to the writing (which is always worth marks...) The labs were never handed back in time, so it was impossible to learn from the mistakes of your previous paper. I also personally had a terrible TA, but I suppose to that end you win some, and you lose some.

I just realized I turned this post into a giant rant. <_< But yeah, how were the labs? :p

He might update it for next year, he told me the lab manual was written YEARS ago.

The lab course was divided into 5 sections, but only 4 lab report (1, 2, 3, and 4&5)

1. Complementation and Mapping by Transduction - 3 experiments where you do transformations and transductions, isolate transformants of 2 different genes. Then you do transductions to see if the genes are linked and if so what is the distance between them,

2. Transposon Mutagenesis of S. meliloti, isolation and identification of auxotrophs - 3 experiments where you introduce transposons into S. meliloti, isolate for auxotrophs (those that can't grow without a certain supplement) and identify what they cannot grow without. You also find revertants and see if they are true or pseudo revertants.

3. Phenotypic analysis of gene expression and mutational analysis of a bacterial gene promoter. 5 experiments where you are trying to figure out if this section of DNA is used in copy number through transposon compatibility tests. You do mutations and stuff to figure it out.

4. Expression of an S. meliloti protein in E. coli. 4 experiments mostly for techniques. You PCR a gene, clone it into a plasmid, confirm cloning with restriction enzyme digestion and gel electrophoresis and then introduce it into E. coli to upregulate the expression of the gene. You also use SDS page to figure out the molecular weight.

5. Expression of Central Carbon Metabolism genes in S. meliloti. 2 experiments where you calculate protein activity and expression using bradford assay and beta-galactosidase activity. It's the same gene that you PCR in section 4 which is why you write 1 lab report on borth sections.

The labs are hard to do well in if you leave it to the last minute. Make sure you make friends so you can bounce ideas off each other because you will need it.