Biochemistry (BCH)

The one credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps transition to UB through an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 198 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

This lecture based course provides a theoretical and practical overview of key laboratory techniques in the fields of biochemistry, molecular biology, and physiology. Techniques taught in this course are used in various fields of life science research, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. Students also learn library skills to help them find scientific journals based on various criteria, including author, subject, and technique.

One semester general biochemistry course for science majors and students of pharmacy. Covers protein and membrane structure and function, metabolism, and nucleic acid structure and molecular biology.

One semester course for Biochemistry majors, focuses on gaining proficiency in reading and writing in the discipline and expanding student knowledge in multiple areas of modern biochemistry. Involves written and oral critiques of research articles from the scientific literature and the composition of a research proposal to serve as the basis for BCH 498 undergraduate research.

Focuses on learning cutting-edge biochemistry by reading, analyzing, and discussing research papers. Emphasizes molecular and mechanistic aspects of signal transduction in growth, differentiation, development and cancer; and signaling in response to hormones to the nervous system.

Students learn to evaluate research seminars in regards to clarity of presentation and quality of data. They attend research seminars and critique those seminars in the context of at least one published paper by the seminar speaker. Class discussions and commentary on both the seminars and critiques are also involved.

Elective course that familiarizes students with up-to-date concepts in eukaryotic gene expression. Through a classroom discussion of selected papers, introduces students to current issues in gene transcription, mRNA processing, and their regulation. Augments classroom learning with detailed problem sets.

The course develops an understanding of genetics with an emphasis on biomedicine, disease, and health-related science.

This course will cover topics in Cellular Signaling pertinent to the Health Sciences and Disease, including an overview of signal transduction in health and disease, sessions on the nuclear FGFR and neuronal development. Other topics to be covered include stem cells, and neurobiology; the unfolded protein response and diabetes; changes in signaling leading to polycystic kidney disease; new strides made in the field of immunology resulting in new avenues of cancer chemotherapy. Both Proteomic and Genomic approaches in the study of Signal Transduction in Health and Disease will covered. This course is dual listed with BCH 603.

Introduction to Bioinformatics and Computational Biology will introduce students to the principles and practices used in computational analysis of DNA and protein sequences, analysis of large scale DNA and protein datasets, statistical analysis of sequence alignments and microarray and next-generation sequencing datasets, and proteomics. This 3 credit course will be taught in the computer lab and will feature a mix of didactic and hands-on instruction. Typically, the Tuesday session will be a didactic lecture introducing the topic of the week and giving out assignments for completion at or prior to the Thursday lab session. The Thursday lab will focus on practical use of the concepts taught in the Tuesday lecture. Laboratory sessions will sometimes include programming assignments in the Python computer language.

Under the direction of faculty, the course consists of an original investigative project involving laboratory and/or library work. Open to majors as a research project. Requires one poster presentation. Majors must complete 8 credit hours.

For students having specific academic interests or objectives; requires a department faculty sponsor before preregistration.