Spring Courses
Please search Connect CAROLINA for course schedules and availabilities.
*Courses with asterisks are appropriate for first-year BBSP students.
*BIOC 631 Advanced Topics in Molecular Biology (BIOL 631, GNET 631, MCRO 631, PHCO 631) (4). Prerequisites for undergraduates, at least one undergraduate course in both biochemistry and genetics. This course focuses on DNA, the molecule most fundamental to life: organization of DNA into genomes, genome replication, recombination, repair, and cellular responses to DNA damage. The purpose of this course is to also provide historical, basic, and current information about the flow and regulation of genetic information from DNA to RNA in a variety of biological stems. Marzluff, Strahl. A. Sancar, Griffith, Baldwin and Ramsden (course directors).
*BIOC 662 Macromolecular Interactions (1). Prerequisites, BIOC 650–652 or permission of the instructor. Theory and practice of biophysical methods used for macromolecular characterization, and for exploring interactions between macromolecules and their ligands. Techniques include surface plasmon resonance, analytical ultracentrifugation, calorimetry, and light scattering. Tripathy (course director).
*BIOC 663A Macromolecular NMR (1). Prerequisites, BIOC 650–652 or permission of the instructor. Principles and practice of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as applied to small and biological molecules in solution. Concepts for understanding two-dimensional NMR are introduced for applications in biological macromolecular structure and dynamics. Course intended primarily for graduate students. Spring (odd-numbered years). Campbell (course director)
*BIOC 663B Macromolecular NMR Practice (1). Prerequisite, BIOC650- 652 or permission of the course director. Lab section for BIOC 663A. Course intended primarily for graduate students. Spring (odd-numbered years). Campbell (course director), TerHorst, Lee
*BIOC 664 (CHEM 791) Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Microscopy (1). Principles of fluorescence spectroscopy followed by a survey of methods and applications in fluorescence microscopy, including: Single molecule microscopy, Super-resolution microscopy, Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, Fluorescence polarization microscopy, Fluorescence resonance energy transfer microscopy, Fluorescence lifetime microscopy, Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, Single fluorescence particle tracking. Erie (course director). Offered in odd numbered years.
BIOC 665 Advanced NMR (2). Prerequisite, BIOC 663A/CHEM 734 and associated NMR lab (BIOC 663B/ CHEM 734 or permission of the course director). Consists of both lecture and lab format. The objectives of this course are to introduce students to advanced topics in macromolecular NMR spectroscopy. Topics include understanding fundamental concepts associated with two-dimensional double resonance spectroscopy as well as triple resonance 3D NMR spectroscopy (understanding pulse sequences, setting up experiments on the spectrometer, processing data, and assigning resonances on a small protein). Spring (even-numbered years). Campbell (course director)
*BIOC 666 X-ray Crystallography of Macromolecules (1). Prerequisites, BIOC 650–653 or permission of the instructor. Principles of protein crystallography, characterization of crystals, theory of diffraction, phasing of macromolecular crystals, three-dimensional models of proteins, and structure refinement. Course intended primarily for graduate students. Ke (course director)
*BIOC 667 Macromolecular Crystallographic Methods (2). Permission of course director. A combined lecture/laboratory workshop for serious students of protein crystallography. Course intended primarily for graduate students. Nicely (course director).
*BIOC 669 Macromolecular Crystallographics Methods II (2). Protein x-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy are two of the principle techniques used to experimentally determine the structures of macromolecules. While the data collection and initial processing steps are quite different, the fields converge at the model building, refinement, and analysis stage. This course addresses the fundamental concepts and best practices of how to build, refine, and analyze macromolecular structures with an in-depth treatment of the software and methodologies. Students will solve and build protein structures from provided data, or if available, their own, and analyze the quality of the structures using current best-practices and gold-standard metrics. Endo-Streeter (course director). ***listed as BIOC 690 in Connect Carolina for spring 2024
*BIOC 670 Structural Bioinformatics (1). Prerequisites, none. A lecture course introducing computational methods for protein structure prediction, docking, and design. Basic principles of protein structure, stability, and folding are also reviewed. Popov (course director)
*BIOC 673 Proteomics, Protein Identification and Characterization by Mass Spectrometry (1) Prerequisites, BIOC 650-653 or one semester of physical chemistry or permission of the instructor. A lecture module that introduces students to the basics of mass spectrometry as applied to protein science in the context of systems investigation of biological processes/pathways. Course intended primarily for graduate students. Chen (course director)
*BIOC 675 Fundamentals of cryoEM (1) This module will provide a historical and technical overview of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), with a focus on recent developments in single-particle cryo-EM for high-resolution protein structure determination. The course will provide an overview of current methods in cryo-EM, including a theoretical framework for data collection, data processing, and structure determination. It will consist of eight lectures (1.5 h each), two sessions of hands-on training in the cryo-EM core, homework assignments and an exam. Baker (course director), Strauss
*BIOC 700 Origins of Life (2) Learn about where we came from, who we are and where we are going. A seminar course in ideas and experiments related to how molecules formed and began to live. Discussions. Carter (course director). Not currently offered.
*BIOC 703 Seminar in Chromatin and Epigenetics (0.5) The course focuses on the ongoing Chromatin and Epigenetic seminars that occur each month through the Carolina Chromatin Consortium. During the semester, students will attend the monthly seminars given by different faculty across campus and participate in the scientific discussions by asking questions and engaging the speaker and others. Students will be expected to familiarize in advance with the speaker’s work so that they can optimally engage the speaker when she/he presets. Students will also be expected to attend and present at the annual spring Chromatin and Epigenetics symposium, where they will present a poster or give a talk on their work. Students will receive critical feedback on their projects as well as their presentations to improve their scientific approach and presentation skills. Brian Strahl (course director)
*BIOC 704 Seminars in Biophysics (2). Prerequisite, the permission of the instructor. Students present seminars coordinated with the visiting lecturer series of the Program in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics. Slep (course director).
BBSP 705 Rigor and Reproducibility (1)The goal of this class is to introduce topics concerning rigor and reproducibility in research early in students’ careers (i.e. 2nd year in graduate school) in a campus-wide and consistent format to ensure that each trainee contributes to the integrity of UNC research culture. The importance of reproducibility and rigor in academic science has been highlighted in multiple publications in a myriad of journals, all describing the problems arising from irreproducible research and suggesting ways to increase rigor and reproducibility. This subject matter is both timely and important. The NIH now requires that all R, F, and T grants include a section addressing Rigor and Reproducibility, both for proposed research (R and F grants) and for training (F and T grants). We have based this class on addressing rigor and reproducibility at all stages of the classic scientific method of hypothesis testing (i.e. generating a hypothesis à designing an experiment à collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data à publishing), and identifying the areas in which one’s research can lead to incorrect conclusions and erroneous publications. Our goal is to make the class both informative and engaging and to foster class discussion based on real-world scenarios. Nicholas. Deshmukh. (course directors)
BIOC 711 Research Concepts in Biochemistry (2). Prerequisite, master’s candidate in biochemistry and biophysics. A series of lectures and exercises on formulating a research plan to attack a specific scientific problem, and on presenting the research plan in the form of a grant proposal. Dohlman (course director), Staff. Not currently offered.
BIOC 723A Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology: Postsynaptic Mechanisms-Intracellular Signaling (NBIO 723A, PHCO 723A, PHYI 723A) (2). Prerequisite, permission of course director. Explores biochemical signal transduction events following activation of neurotransmitter receptors including G-protein coupling, desensitization, signaling specificity, downstream effectors, calcium signaling and tryosine kinases. Course meets for five weeks with six lecture hours per week. Neurobiology faculty.
BIOC 723B Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology: Presynaptic Mechanisms and Synaptic Plasticity (NBIO 723B, PHCO 723B, PHYI 723B) (2). Prerequisite, the permission of the course director. Explores the mechanisms regulating the release of neurotransmitters from nerve terminals, including quantal release, vesicle and terminal membrane proteins, neurotransmitter transporters, and plasticity of synaptic transmission. Course meets for five weeks with six lecture hours per week. Spring. Manis (course director), Neurobiology faculty.
*BIOC 740-745 CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CELL SIGNALING (1). ← Click on the course title to see the current year’s themes
Prerequisites, students are expected to have had undergraduate courses in biochemistry and cell & molecular biology or to have acquired knowledge in those fields. Permission is required of each module leader. Each module is taught in 5-week blocks and will investigate principles and mechanisms of signal transduction and cell proliferation control with an emphasis on an in-depth discussion of current literature and unanswered questions in the field. Modules are team-taught as a combination of lectures and discussions with major themes repeating in alternate years (740-742 taught consecutively in odd-numbered years, and 743-745 in even-numbered years). Themes include protein kinases, GTPases, cell cycle control, signaling specificity and feedback (networks), tumor suppressors and oncogenes, signaling in development and stem cell biology, etc.PHCO Faculty.
BIOC 888/GNET 888 Responsible Conduct of Research (1) Classroom-based graduate-level course covering critical topics for ethical and responsible conduct of experimental research. There are both classroom lecture, workshop-type discussion components, in addition to assigned outside of class readings. Case studies and hypothetical situations involving the most likely scenarios confronting graduate students will be covered, these topics include mentor and mentee relationships, publication authorship, collaboration, peer review, conflicts of interest, intellectual property, plagiarism, data acquisition, and data processing. *BIOC 888 intended for 4th-year students in biophysics training program; GNET 888 intended for 4th-year students on biochemistry track.
992 Master’s Thesis
994 Doctoral Dissertation