Courses

Defense systems: self and non-self; innate and acquired; cells and organs involved; humoral and cell-mediated.
Antigens: Immunogenicity and antigenicity; chemical nature (bacterial, viral and synthetic)
Antibodies: Structure and function of...

Tools of molecular biology: Agarose and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis; Northern and Southern blots and hybridization analysis; Western blots and protein detection; PCR and RAPD, RFLP.
Purification and characterization of nucleic acids: Principles for...

Protein-ligand Interactions: Binding sites of haemoglobin and myoglobin, binding of oxygen and carbon monoxide, micro-environment of the haem iron, the Hill Plot. Protein engineering.
Allostery: interaction between binding sites. Theoretical models; the...

Primary structure: amino acid composition of proteins, determination of amino acid sequence, importance of primary structure synthesis of peptides, covalent modification of polypeptides.
Secondary structure (regular arrangement of the polypeptide backbone...

Introduction: Membrane types and functions; chemical composition (lipids, proteins and carbohydrates); amphipatic nature of lipids (formation of monolayers, bilayers/liposomes, and micelles); Reactions of phospholipases.
Structure and properties: Models (...

Enzyme catalysed reactions: Time course of reaction; effects of various factors on reaction rate: enzyme concentration, pH, temperature, substrate concentration, activators and inhibitors; enzyme specificity; protease activity in plant extracts; purification...

Overview of chemical thermodynamics: Internal, energy, enthalpy, entropy, Gibb’s free energy, laws of thermodynamics; Spontaneous and non-spontaneous processes; Free energy changes in biochemistry.
Principles of thermodynamics and their application to...

Metabolic control: Design of metabolic pathways. Regulatory enzymes fine control (allosteric, substrate/product feed- back and feed-forward controls, covalent modification) and coarse control (induction and repression of enzyme synthesis).
Regulation of...

General introduction: Coordination in multicellular organisms
Major classes of hormones: Mammalian, plants, insects.
Major endocrine glands: Hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenals, testes, ovaries, pancreas.
Biosynthesis and degradation of hormones:...

The genetic code: Deciphering the code. Universality and degeneracy of the genetic code. Wobble hypothesis, colinearity of gene polypeptide.
Translation: Ribosome structure. Activation of Amino acids. Initiation, elongation and termination. Eukaryotic and...