BCH - Biochemistry Courses
A&S Biochemistry Course Descriptions
BCH210H - Biochemistry I: Proteins, Lipids and Metabolism (36L, 24T)
Andreopoulos & Baker
Marking Scheme: First Term Test (30%), Second Term Test (25%) & Exam (45%)
BCH311H - Biochemistry II: Nucleic Acids and Biological Information Flow (24L, 24T)
S. Kelley, G. Brown, R. Andreopoulos
Marking Scheme: 2 midterms (30/25) + 4 problem sets (/10) + final (/35).
This course was a solid 5/5 until the 3rd section of the course. I love prof. A but unfortunately have to admit that the lecturing style/organization of lecture notes of Kelley and Brown were better. You start off with history, move on to techniques, have a lecture on biosynthesis of nucleic acids (absolutely <3) under Kelley and move on to replication with Brown and then transcr/splicing/transl with Andreopoulos.
Problem sets are not hard but I found not paying any attention to them finding them of trivial % compared to the tests. Both tests so far I've found very fair (note: put everything into one big picture for yourself).
This was offered for the first time this year so the bit of disorganization in terms of slides in the latter part of the course is totally understandable (and honestly it is a 3rd year course so that shouldn't even be a problem). I just think the novelty of the central dogma in detail has worn out by this point and the enthusiasm for the material has waned for me.
Overall Course Rating: 4/5
BCH335H - Nucleic Acids and Recombinant DNA Technology (24L, 6T)
G.W. Brown, P.N. Lewis & C. Smibert
Marking Scheme: 40% midterm, 40% final and 20% assignment.
Overall it was a good course - the first prof (Pulleyblank) had a gazillion things to memorize and kept talking about how every discovery in biochemistry was "instrumental to winning the war" (I never did figure out which war he was talking about. Probably WWII?). Pulleyblank's material required a bit organic chemistry, and this was actually nice, since you got a great overview of the history of DNA/RNA discoveries, and learnt precisely how a number of DNA/RNA assays or techniques worked. Other three profs (Lewis, Brown, Smibert) were terrific and material was very interesting. Tests were pretty good overall.
I don't think it's useful to give a mark out of 5, but I'll say that I would take the course again knowing then what I know now.
Overall Course Rating: 4/5
BCH340H - Proteins: from Structure to Proteomics (24L, 6T)
A. Chakrabartty, H.S. Chan, A. Emili, W.A. Houry, S. Prosse & S. Sharpe
This one is hard to rate objectively, but I'll try. You have six professors over the term, each teaching for 2 weeks, and half of them teach interesting material, the other half got me to fall asleep within 10 minutes of every lecture (especially when you get to enzyme kinetics). Best prof of the term was Emili at the very end who covered protein-protein interactions and interactomes, and was overall a terrific lecturer. Overall, the material you learned was pretty good and worthwhile.
Tests and assignments on the other hand were absolutely terrible. I wasn't happy with the marking of the assignments (or tests), and judging by the dozen people coverging around the TA after they're handed back, I'm guessing I wasn't the only one. First midterm had an average of around...62%, which was apparently "pretty good" and had "a nice Gaussian distribution". (for comparison, BCH242, the pre-requisite, had a final average around 71-72%. I think BCH335 was B- range too). Didn't check ROSI yet, but the final exam was rough - I simply didn't have time to finish and my mark probably reflected that. (Plus that first question from Houry's section was kind of stupid because it had nothing to do with enzyme kinetics, but then I'm a bit biased because I didn't get most of it )
Would I take it again? I'm not sure. The material was worthwhile, but the marking was horrendous, and you got the feeling that they couldn't care less about how you do in the course.
Overall Course Rating: 3/5
BCH371H1 - A Laboratory Course in Biochemistry (72P)
Coordinator: A.N. Khan-Trottier
Marking Scheme: 25% Term Test, 25% Final Examination & 35% laboratory reports
This is actually a really good course - thinking back to it, this type of course might be the best reason to take one of the BIG specialists (haven't done 471 yet, so can't comment on that). Lab reports take a ridiculous amount of time (I think they were around 20-25 double-spaced pages each), but you learn alot from writing them. I wrote a manuscript for publication in the summer before 371, and I probably could've saved a month or two had a taken 371 first. So while the reports are difficult, you get great returns back what you invest. Labs themselves were pretty fun - the atmosphere was usually very light (unless you didn't sleep the night before to finish a report) and there's very little pressure. If you mess up an experiment, you can just grab data from a friend as long as you reference properly. TAs were very flexible and did give extensions when needed, though it would've been nice to see more comments coming back from the reports.
Tests and in-lab quizzes were both pretty straight-forward and tests asked some pretty good (and very fair) questions. First one was a bit on the long side, but the 11% mark adjustment fixed that.
Overall Course Rating: 3/5
