This course is designed to introduce Medical students to some of the lab techniques employed in Biochemistry and a Molecular Genetics lab. In addition, it will reinforce some of the concepts presented in standard Biochemistry/Genetics textbooks. This lab will also allow students to develop some basic practical skills fundamental to working in Biomedical labs. During this course, students will learn acid-base properties of amino acid solution, spectrophotometry, enzyme kinetics, separation of amino acid solutions by paper chromatography, principles and application of polymerase chain reaction and gel electrophoresis. Students will use knowledge they acquired during the course to measure unknown concentrations of glucose containing solutions. The students will also learn how to use publicly available databases to recover human genomic sequences and design assays that enable researchers to distinguish between variations of these sequences observed between and among populations.
