This course will give students a theoretical and practical introduction into important methods in molecular biology. This is a lecture-based course that provides a theoretical overview of the key molecular biology techniques used in basic life science research and by the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industry for the discovery of novel therapeutics. Students will understand how to work with molecular biological laboratory equipment and identify biological solutions relevant for molecular biology research. Laboratory safety aspects will also be a focus.

Along with the practical aspects of the course, there will also be a particular emphasis on the planning, presentation, and critical evaluation of the results in the form of a laboratory report or oral presentation. You'll also learn about high-throughput sequencing and microarray expression analysis, methods that generate massive amounts of biological data. The instructor discusses the types of data these techniques generate, the relevance to bioinformatics, and their uses in the diagnosis and treatment of human disease.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, you should be able to

• Explain the principles of basic methods in experimental molecular biology
• Describe experimental molecular biology techniques, quantitative methods, and instrumentation used in functional genome research and biotechnology
• Apply learned techniques when solving molecular biological problems
• Understand the general safety regulations for laboratory work in molecular biology
• Interpret experimental data
• Critically evaluate and discuss experimental results

Topics Include

• Gene cloning, manipulation and sequencing
• PCR
• RNA interference
• Gene expression analysis
• Protein expression, engineering, and structure determination
• Fundamentals of experimental design