Biochemistry: Biomolecules, Methods, and Mechanisms
Enhance your scientific thinking and data analysis skills with this in-depth adventure through biochemistry.
Course Information
Certificate Track
Learn for Free
About this Course
Do you want to prepare for medical school, study a STEM field, become a research scientist, or transition to a career in the booming biotechnology industry? Or maybe you just want to understand the chemical reactions that govern life itself. Join Professor Yaffe, an MIT professor and practicing surgeon, as he guides you through the science that inspires countless doctors, researchers, and students alike.
We developed 7.05x Biochemistry with an emphasis on:
- Developing your scientific thinking skills including articulating hypotheses, performing thought experiments, interpreting data, and designing experiments.
- Using data based on real scientific experiments and highlighting the scientific process.
- Asserting that biology is an active field that changes daily through examples of MIT (and other current) research, not static information in a textbook.
- Visualizing real molecular structures with PyMOL to better understand function and mechanism.
- Appreciating the quantitative aspects of biochemistry.
- Translating topics in biochemistry to diseases and medicine.
- Conveying the authentic MIT experience.
- Implementing the science of learning in the course design.
We offer a thorough and robust means of certifying learners in their mastery of the MITx biochemistry content, through the MITx 7.05x Biochemistry Competency Exam. This challenging option is available only to those who register for the verified-certificate track, and successful completion of this exam is the majority of the assessment grade that counts toward a certificate. The Competency Exam will be open during the final week of the course.
What you'll learn
- How to apply the scientific method to pursue research questions.
- How to analyze protein purification schemes.
- How scientists determine the structure of a protein.
- How structure, allostery, and the Bohr effect influence hemoglobin function.
- How to interpret graphs, plot behaviors, and calculate constants related to enzyme function.
- How pumps, transporters, and channels differ to regulate molecule transfer across membranes.
- How G proteins play a key role in signaling.
Prerequisites
7.00x Introduction to Biology, undergraduate introductory chemistry, and undergraduate organic chemistry I (chemical structures and biological mechanisms).
Meet your instructors
Michael Yaffe
David H. Koch Professor of Science; Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering; Director, MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine; Director, KI Clinical Investigator Program
Michael B. Yaffe studies the chain of reactions that controls a cell’s response to stress, cell injury, and DNA damage. He also is an attending surgeon at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. He completed a residency in General Surgery, a Fellowship in Surgical Critical Care, Burns and Trauma at Harvard Medical School, and post-doctoral training in Signal Transduction with Lew Cantley in Cell Biology at Harvard. He received his B.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, and his M.D. in 1989 and Ph.D. degree in 1987 from Case Western Reserve University in Biophysical Chemistry.
