Principle of Life Science 2

Key Features

Since this course covers the students who have a broad range of different background, I take a lecture style with emphasis on communication between me and students. It means that I will not just give a lecture in the room, but I expect interactions between us. This course just started last year with quite number of students, I favor to stop may talk if students do not understand the contents, and ask questions to clarify what they feel difficult. So sometimes one topic takes long time to explain, even use all one session. I also give a quiz to help them understand the topic. At the latter half of the course, I show examples of how to apply the biochemical and biophysical methods to clarify the important life science questions. By using actual analysis published on the international journal, I hope students can get a hint to overcome their daily research problem, and apply these methods to their own projects.

Course Aims

Important subjects in current modern life science have been investigated by using the biochemical and biophysical methods. The aim of this course is to introduce fundamental principals of such methods, and insights into functions of gene products in vivo and in vitro, obtained by these analyses. Lecture will begin with explanation of principals, and will be followed by introducing actual analysis.

Lecture Contents

Biochemical methods

1. Basic information of protein
2. Principle for protein purification #1: expression and fractionation
3. Principle for protein purification #2: membrane proteins
4. Principle for protein purification #3: column chromatography
5. Assay for protein #1: quantification, electrophoresis, protein interaction
6. Assay for protein #2: mass spectroscopy
7. Assay for protein #3: kinetics of enzymatic activity, reconstitution

Biophysical methods

8. Observation of protein behavior in vivo
9. Detection of protein-protein interactions
10. Spectroscopic analysis
11. Electrophysiology
12. Electron microscopic analysis
13. Protein crystallization and X-ray analysis
14. Bioinformatics

Key Words

Protein, amino acids, structure, crystallization, spectroscopy, protein purification, reconstitution, protein interactions, enzyme

Course Schedule

Session	Contents
1	Introduction of Life Science research: example of bacterial flagellar motor
2	Basic information of protein
3	Principle for protein purification #1: expression and fractionation
4	Principle for protein purification #2: column chromatography
5	Character of membrane and membrane protein
6	Principle for protein purification #3: membrane protein
7	Assay for protein #1: quantification, electrophoresis, protein interaction
8	Assay for protein #2: mass spectroscopy
9	Assay for protein #3: kinetics of enzymatic activity, reconstitution
10	Single molecule analysis to observe protein behavior in vivo and in vitro
11	Assay of protein #4: size, shape and structural analysis
12	Assay of protein #5: X-ray crystallography to solve protein structure
13	Assay of protein #6: Electron microscopic analysis
14	Assay of protein #7: Bioinformatics
15	final examination

Grading

Evaluation will be based on participation, weekly exercises, and a final examination.

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