Chemistry

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  • CAS CH 541: Natural Products Chemistry
    Chemical and biosynthetic pathways leading to important natural products derived from fatty acids, terpenes, amino acids, polyketides, shikimic acid, and other biosynthetic intermediates. Three hours lecture, one-hour discussion.
  • CAS CH 550: Materials Chemistry
    Basic chemistry and physical properties of hard or soft materials (alternate years). Topics include material structure, synthesis, and properties, with applications to materials such as fuel cells, super- and semiconductors, nanomaterials, and biomaterials. Connections between materials properties and applications, such as energy capture, conversion, and storage, are covered.
  • GRS CH 621: Biochemistry I
    Introductory biochemistry. Protein structure and folding enzyme mechanisms, kinetics, and allostery; nucleic acid structure; macromolecular biosynthesis with emphasis on specificity and fidelity; lipids and membrane structure; bioenergetics; vitamins and coenzymes; introduction to intermediary metabolismvitamins and coenzymes; introduction to intermediary metabolism. Three hours lecture, four hours laboratory, one-hour discussion. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Quantitative Reasoning II, Critical Thinking.
    • Quantitative Reasoning II
    • Critical Thinking
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • GRS CH 622: Biochemistry II
    Cell metabolism, including the regulation of catabolic, anabolic, and anaplerotic routes, and generation and utilization of energy in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Polysaccharides, energy storage; lipid and isoprene, nitrogen, and nucleotide metabolism; macromolecular biosynthesis of RNA, DNA, and protein. Three hours lecture, four hours laboratory, one-hour discussion.
  • GRS CH 623: Chemical Biology
    Research at the chemistry-biology interface, including directed evolution, unnatural amino acid mutagenesis, chemical genetics, proteomics, and fluorescent reporters of enzyme function. Reading, discussing and evaluating the current chemical biology literature is a significant component of the course.
  • GRS CH 624: Macromolecular Structure Determination
    This course covers the determination of structures of biological macromolecules including RNA, DNA, and proteins. Topics include macromolecular assemblies and symmetry, crystal forms, diffraction, phase determination, data acquisition, model building and refinement, model analysis and homology modeling.
  • 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), microRNA, long non-coding RNA, riboswitches, and CRISPR.
  • GRS CH 629: DNA Nanotechnology
    Structural biology of DNA. Synthetic DNA objects, DNA origami, DNA templated synthesis, and DNAzymes. The main focus is DNA in nanotechnology, not the involvement of DNA in 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 fundamental concept of symmetry, as applied to inorganic coordination complexes.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
    The descriptive chemistries of the metallic elements are surveyed to develop a broad knowledge of these elements and how to prepare their compounds and understand the resultant reactivities. Case studies are taken from older and recent literature sources.
  • 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.
  • GRS CH 642: Organic Reaction Mechanisms
    Fundamentals of organic reaction mechanisms related to acid/base catalysis, reactions of the carbonyl group, cycloadditions, nucleophilic displacement reactions, and redox chemistry.
  • GRS CH 643: Synthetic Methods of Organic Chemistry
    Organic synthesis strategies for total synthesis of complex natural products. Various approaches for organic molecules whose synthesis constitutes major contributions to organic chemistry.
  • GRS CH 644: Medicinal Chemistry
    Synthetic organic chemistry and pharmacology as applied to development, testing, and production of medically useful agents. Lectures and discussions by research chemists affiliated with leading pharmaceutical companies. A research paper is required.
  • GRS CH 645: Transition Metal Chemistry
    Introduction to the concepts of transition metal-mediated reactions and mechanisms, including electronic structure and properties, reaction mechanisms, kinetics, organometallic compounds, catalytic reactions, and aspects of asymmetric catalysis.

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