Biochemistry

This course introduces basic neuroscience. The scope of the course covers the basic structures and sensory and motor function of the nervous system, as well as the high function of the brain and related diseases. The course provides a broad perspective of how neural information is processed in the brain, and how brain activity determines individual behaviors in response to environmental stress. Text: Mark Bear, Barry Connors, and Michael Paradiso, eds., EXPLORING THE BRAIN.

Innovative drug research has a drug discovery and a drug development phase. In the drug discovery phase, medicinal chemists make molecules and pharmacologists test these molecules. This course challenges students to think of a medical need, to find a target, to come up with a lead, and optimize this lead towards a drug candidate. While performing this structure-based drug design project, students learn about medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and some computational chemistry. Concepts of organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry that form the foundation of structure-based drug design are taught in a just-in-time fashion.

This course is about Nanomedicine and its practical applications. Topics include Future medicine-nanomedicine, Nanomedicine, Nanomedicine in diagnostics, Nanomedicine in drug delivery, Nanomedicine in medical device, and Safety issues in nanomedicne.

Assessment: Reports (10%), Mid-term (40%), Final (50%)

Prerequisite: Nanobiotechnology

This course examines the principles of basic biochemistry, including an introduction to metabolism. Topics include glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, glycogen metabolism, citric acid cycle, lipid metabolism, photosynthesis, nucleic acid, protein synthesis, etc. 

This course examines how cells work at the molecular level, with an emphasis on human biochemistry and molecular biology. It focuses initially on how genetic information is regulated in eukaryotes, including replication, transcription and translation, and molecular aspects of the cell cycle, mitosis and meiosis. Then it explores cellular metabolism and how cells extract and store energy from fuels like fats and carbohydrates, how the use of fuels is modulated in response to exercise, starvation and disease, and how other key metabolites are processed.

This course is suitable for students majoring in or specializing in biochemistry. It is recommended to have studied organic chemistry first. The course content covers units such as amino acids, proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and lipids, and further details their biochemical principles, mechanisms of action, metabolic pathways and regulatory mechanisms. Because "Molecular Biology" is a compulsory course for the Department of Biochemical Technology, in order to avoid repetition, this course does not teach molecular biology. Sole material to be used in the course: Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, 8th Edition.