Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, 800 E. Kirkwood Ave. Bloomington, IN 47405. afeig@indiana.edu
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An examination of the syllabus provides the most comprehensive way to review topics covered. The course contains five units: 1) Water, Weak Forces and Thermodynamics; 2) Proteins and Peptides; 3) Sugars, Lipids and Membranes; 4) Nucleic Acids; 5) Enzymes, Enzyme Mechanisms and Biological Reactions. The first section serves as an introduction and review that attempts to dust the cobwebs off material the students first saw in general chemistry (but usually do not remember well enough to use >15 months later). The next three sections survey the major classes of biological macromolecules reiterating many of the same themes in each.
The final section examines in detail the way
biological catalysts allow life to occur under mild conditions
and how the unique properties of the different biological
molecules assist in this process.
For the most part, the course follows the organization of the
textbook. In those few cases where the textbook is less thorough
than I would have liked, reserve readings (review articles from
journals such as Trends in Biological Sciences) supplement it and
fill in the gaps. Furthermore, a very extensive web page provides
close to 100 links to web sites relevant to the course material.
In many cases, these web sites are used during class discussion.
These sites include purely pedagogical pages (designed by an
author to teach a specific concept), popular science pages, and
web sites designed as research tools.