Courses

• GRS CH 625: Enzymology: Mechanisms of Enzymatic Reactions
  Covers enzyme structure-function relationships. A tool-box of methods is presented, including kinetics (steady state and pre-steady state methods), isotope effects, stereo-chemical methods, site-directed mutagenesis, methods to replace natural with unnatural amino acids, mechanism based inhibitors.
• GRS CH 626: Epigenetics
  Surveys protein post-translational modifications and DNA/RNA processing, including mechanistic enzymology of protein and DNA modifications, signal transduction induced by the modifications, and related practical applications.
• GRS CH 627: RNA Structure and Function
  Chemical and structural biology of natural RNA molecules, including ribosomal RNA, catalytic RNA (ribozymes), siRNA (small interfering RNA), and other small transcribed RNA molecules. Some attention to biological function, but main focus is not RNA cell and molecular biology.
• GRS CH 631: Advanced Coordination Chemistry I: Structure and Bonding
  The interdependence of chemical bonding, spectroscopic characteristics, and reactivity properties of coordination compounds and complexes are described and formalized using the fudamental concept of symmetry, as applied to inorganic coordination complexes. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 632: Advanced Coordination Chemistry II: Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms
  The mechanistic study of ligand substitution and electron transfer processes in coordination compounds are discussed in the context of basic molecular orbital theory. The connections between small molecule inorganic and biological macromolecular metal-catalyzed processes are presented. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 633: Physical Methods for Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry
  A discussion of the physical techniques for the study of structural, magnetic, and redox-active properties of transitional metal complexes. Techniques discussed include x-ray crystallography; x-ray absorption; vibrational, NMR, EPR, and Mossbauer spectroscopies; and electrochemistry. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 634: Metallobiochemistry
  The roles of transition metals in biology are assessed by review of the structural, spectroscopic, and genetic aspects of metallobiochemistry. Metal import and trafficking; cofactor biogenesis; biocatalytic transformations in biochemistry; reactive oxygen species; the inorganic basis of life.
• GRS CH 635: Synthetic Methodology in Inorganic Chemistry
  Survey of techniques for the preparation of complexes of the metallic elements in solution (as distinct from solid-state synthesis).
• GRS CH 641: Physical Organic Chemistry
  Physical fundamentals of organic chemistry. Thermodynamics, kinetics, molecular orbital theory, and theory of concerted reactions. Isotope effects, aromaticity, linear free energy relationships, acidity functions, photo- and free-radical chemistry. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 642: Organic Reaction Mechanisms
  Fundamentals of organic reaction mechanisms. Techniques used to study reaction mechanisms. Reactive intermediates: carbonium ions, radicals, carbenes, and nitrenes. Acid/base catalysis, reactions for the carbonyl group, cycloaddition, nucleophilic displacement reactions, and redox chemistry. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 643: Synthetic Methods of Organic Chemistry
  Organic synthesis strategies for total synthesis. Various approaches for organic molecules whose synthesis constitutes major contributions to organic chemistry. Three hours lecture.
• GRS CH 644: Medicinal Chemistry
  Intensive overview of recent advances in the medicinal and pharmaceutical sciences. Introduces the concepts of drug design and development, including organic synthesis, combinatorial chemistry, chemical informatics, molecular modeling and drug design, drug metabolism, and specific therapeutic targets.
• GRS CH 651: Molecular Quantum Mechanics I
  Postulates of quantum mechanics with emphasis on chemical applications; application to model systems: particle in a box, harmonic oscillator, rigid rotor, hydrogen atom; tunneling; angular momentum theory, spin; ladder operators, computational methods.
• GRS CH 652: Molecular Quantum Mechanics II
  The chemical bond; Huckel, molecular orbital, and valence bond theories; ab initio methods, density functional theory; Born-Oppenheimer approximation/breakdown; time-dependent processes; Fermi's golden rule; non-adiabaticity; time-dependent perturbation theory; computational methods.
• GRS CH 654: Methods of Chemical Physics
  Vector calculus with applications. Fourier series and Fourier integral with applications and function of a complex variable with applications. Also Green's function methods, theory of linear vector spaces, and solutions of eigenfunction problems.
• GRS CH 655: Statistical Mechanics I
  Introduction to statistical mechanical fundamentals; ensemble theory, Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein, Gibbs-Boltzmann statistics; computational methods, Monte Carlo, Molecular Dynamics, many-body quantum mechanical simulations, normal mode analysis; ergodic hypothesis, modern theories of liquids and biomolecules, thermodynamic perturbation theory, integral equations, Debye-Huckel theory.
• GRS CH 658: Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics
  Chemical kinetics and reaction dynamics. Rate theory. Theoretical models of reaction dynamics: transition state theory, collision theory, statistical methods. Transport theory. Modern experimental approaches. Photochemical and photophysical dynamics, energy transfer, condensed phase and atmospheric reaction processes.
• GRS CH 699: Teaching College Chemistry I
  The goals, contents, and methods of instruction in chemistry. General teaching-learning issues. Required of all teaching fellows.
• GRS CH 721: Enzyme Kinetics and Mechanisms
  Principles of enzyme structure catalysis; steady-state and transition-state kinetics; detection and characterization of intermediates; enzyme inhibition; allosteric and other regulatory phenomena; case studies of well-characterized mechanisms.
• GRS CH 722: Protein Chemistry
  Methods for determining the structure of noncrystalline proteins, including protein sequence analysis, chemical modification, NMR spectroscopy and site-specific mutagenesis; case studies of the structure and function of selected proteins. Three hours lecture.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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