Biological Sciences

This course focuses on the mechanism of cancer generation and progression and on the most advanced treatments. Starting with a background integrating genetic, cellular, and molecular aspects, it covers recent cancer research leading to a general conceptual framework for the development of this disease. The course also provides insights and illustrations from specific cancer types and concludes with a variety of established and emerging treatments. 

Competency in structure and function of genomes as well as their evolution is essential in modern biology. This course gives students an advanced understanding of current scientific research in molecular mechanism of gene regulation, evolution of genomes and experimental approaches to study the function of genomes. The course focuses on the contribution of molecular biology and genomics to our knowledge of regulation of the gene activity in eukaryotic organisms and concepts of gene expression evolution. Critical analysis of original experimental data provides the intellectual framework for students to discuss the design of experiments and to draw appropriate conclusions from any results.

This course emphasizes hands-on laboratory experience and teaches students research background, relevant theories, and basic laboratory techniques relevant to their field of study. Students formulate a research plan, implement it by conducting experiment-based research, and convey the results in scholarly presentations. Students submit a written research report at the end of the course.

This course takes life science knowledge as the carrier, historical development process as the vertical line, and philosophical ideas as the horizontal line, integrating scientific, ideological and historical nature. From a historical perspective, the essence of life, the origin and development of life are explored, and the overall views of people on the fundamental issues of life at all stages of the history of life science are summarized; Review the historical process of the occurrence, development and evolution of the basic concepts of life science; Trace the ideological origin, formation process, scientific and philosophical significance of life science theory; Understand the working methods and thinking methods used or reflected in the research process of life science; Reflect on the origin, value and relationship with society and ethics of life science; Especially highlight the life achievements, successful experience, failure lessons, philosophical views and methodological ideas of famous life scientists. Learning the history of life science can enable students to follow the path of scientists exploring the life world, understand the nature of science and the methods of scientific research as a whole, and learn the spirit of scientists’ dedication to science and courage to innovate. This is of great significance to improve students’ scientific and humanistic literacy.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course offers an introduction to genetics. The course discusses topics including: the basis of heredity: Mendel's laws, monohybrid crosses (dominance and segregation), dihybrid crosses (independent assortment), and predicting the outcome of genetic crosses; structure and replication of DNA: DNA double helix; gene expression, the central dogma: from DNA to RNA, from RNA to protein, transcription, translation, and the genetic code; the eukaryotic cell cycle, cell division, mitosis, and meiosis and the transmission of chromosomes; chromosome theory of inheritance; sex determination and sex-linked inheritance, Dosage compensation in mammals; organization of the human genome: genome projects and sequencing; genetic variability, mutation and polymorphisms, types of genetic variants, point mutations and their consequences, structural genomic variation, copy number variation, and genotype/phenotype relationship; and genetic analysis of human traits: basic Mendelian pedigree patterns, complications to the basic pedigree patterns, and extensions and modifications of basic mendelian principles.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training B (IRT B) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the spring semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the　term.

This course teaches the community ecology of marine kelps through readings of chapters related to ecological topics in the book The Biology and Ecology of Giant Kelp Forests by Schiel & Foster (2015).

The course aims to understand the structure and function of marine kelp communities through the study of the ecology of giant kelp forests.

This course provides an introduction to fundamental bioinformatics. Topics include biological databases, sequence alignment (pairwise and multiple), phylogeny, genomics, next generation sequencing, expression analysis, RNA-seq, RNA structure, and systems biology. 

Tropical forests are amongst the most species-rich biomes in the world. Yet, our understanding of their evolution, functioning, and development is far from complete. There are three main tropical rainforest areas, the Neotropics (Central and South America), Africa, and Asia, but this course mainly focuses on the Neotropics. The course examines what defines the tropical region, the differences, and similarities between the three large blocks of rainforest, and investigates the structure and biodiversity of tropical rainforests. The development of tropical forests, how biodiversity changes over time (ecologically and evolutionarily), and how trophic levels work within these forests are also reviewed. Furthermore, the role of tropical forests in relation to climate change and global carbon cycling is investigated, and a link between tropical savannas and dry tropical forests is made. Finally, the IUCN red list is investigated as well as the different dimensions (e.g., biological, cultural, and political) of nature conservation in tropical areas.

The course provides an introduction to statistical and computational methods of analyzing and interpreting genetics/genomics data. Emphasis is placed on statistical model application and interpretation. Students learn how to implement various statistical methods, analyze and visualize genetic data through programming in R and command line tools. The emphasis is on students doing analyses in class, and on the interpretation of the results. Programming forms a major part of this course. Students learn how to write their own scripts to perform advanced statistical analyses of genetic data. This is an advanced, fast-paced course with extensive programming assignments. We strongly advise students with no previous programming experience to undertake the R crash course. A short introduction to R at the start of the module will be given. If enrolling on the module with no previous programming knowledge, please be aware that programming skills can only be obtained through many hours of practice. Good performance in the course is dependent upon additional private study to further develop programming skills.