Class announcements are listed in reverse chronological order; most recent first (at top).
⋅ Course evaluations are still needed. The site is open until Thursday (Dec. 11). Go to bu.campuslabs.com/courseeval. Use your kerberos password to login.
⋅ All HW and quizzes are due midnight on Monday, but this will soon be changed to Tuesday at midnight. So you can do all of them the night before the exam like you are used to. You won't know your final HW grades until the end.
⋅ Be sure to CHECK posted grades, let DR. TOLAN know ASAP of any discrepancies. All should be rectified by on MONDAY, these are the final scores on which your grade will be based. Lab grades should go up soon. You'll then see 68% of your grade going into the Final. See new posting for how "Best 3" was calculated.
⋅The SCHEDULE for the last week of the course:
12/10; Wednesday Last lecture, #32
2. Evaluation time is offered this week; you have until Dec 13 to finish the on-line evals. Go to "bu.campuslabs.com/courseeval"
3. Please see BELOW for many pointers about the Final Exam.
5. HERE ARE THE RULES FOR THE FINAL:
2. The Final exam will cover new material from the lecture right after Thanksgiving (after nucleic acids) through the last lecture. There will not be any lab-specific questions on the Final Exam.
3. The exam will have the same format as the hourly exams, just a bit longer. The exam will be worth 200 points, so points will have the same weight as previous exams. About 100 points will be from the new material. The other approximately 100 points will cover material from the entire semester (see calculation for this below). Some of these cumulative questions (between 1/3 to 1/4) will come from the problematic questions from old exams.
4. OTHER RULES FOR THE FINAL EXAM:
The Dean also has rules regarding Final Exams. No food, drinks, or personal items, including coats and hats, are allowed at the desk during a final exam. Personal items will not be allowed at your desk during the exam and will be kept at the front of the room until you finish. The exam will NOT require calculators or anything besides a pencil and/or a pen.
Vitamins and Coenzymes; If you see a structure of a vitamin or coenzyme, you should be able to identify it. For a cofactor, you should be able to identify which is the vitamin part and which is the chemistry part (the part of the molecule involved in the chemistry). You should know the 10 water-soluble (thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, pyridoxal, cobalamin, pantothenic acid, biotin, lipoic acid, folic acid, and ascorbic acid) and 4 fat-soluble (vitamins A, E, D, and K) vitamins and their derived cofactors as decribed in class.
˙ Several additions to the web site were pointed out, including a couple of articles about membranes, the list of problematic questions, and where the grades will be posted and when.
˙ Also by Monday next week will be posted the set of questions for the final from those A review session for going over those problematic questions on Exams 1-4 will be Friday Dec 12 at 1 PM in CAS 226.
⋅ Regrades of Exam 4 and your Best 3 should be posted by Monday.
⋅LECTURE: Review sessions will be Dec 12 and 15th; Final is Dec 17. Extra time will be planned, so it will start at 11:30 AM and end at 2:30 PM. Exam is in HAR-105, not MORSE. It will be out of 200 points.
⋅ By Friday this week will be posted the set of questions for the final from those questions on Exams 1-4, in which most students answered incorrectly.
⋅ Your score, counting only your best 3 exams, will be calculated after regrades are in for exam 4; so, after this weekend, by Monday.
⋅ Your lab score will be posted by next week, hopefully Thursday.
⋅ Part of the Final Exam will have questions from the previous four exams. These questions will come from those where no more than 40% of the class got the answer correct. These will be posted by the end of the week.
⋅REVIEW SESSIONS: There will be two review sessions. One will only discuss the questions from the old exams mentioned above. The other will discuss the new material and general questions about the Final Exam. The time and place for these will be posted this week.
⋅ Review session on Friday.
⋅ LABS are complete. Grades should be posted sometime after Thanksgiving:.
⋅ The new version 4 of the syllabus has been posted. It now has the correct FINAL EXAM schedule for Section A1:. WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 17 12-2 PM.
⋅ Under Announcements there is a new web page with links to Videos on nucleic acids. There you will find a link to a better version of the DNA Story on vimeo.
⋅ Also, Required reading on the older experiments of Meischer, Avery, and HersheyChase are posted.
⋅ IN MEMORIAM: James D. Watson just passed away at age of 97, exactly 1 week ago.
⋅ Exam-2 regrade requests were resolved and GS send out the results. If you gained more points they were added to your previous score and should be reflected on the website. YOUR GRADESCOPE SCORE WILL NOT CHANGE.
⋅ Those in BB 621, please contact Dr. Lui who will be teaching your graduate discussion section. He would like to start next week sometime.
⋅ Those who want to enroll in PY 106 as well as BB 422 next semester should go ahead and register for PY 106 and email Dr. Tolan you preferred sections for lab and discussion. We will use a conflict-override in MyBU once we know everyone doing this.
⋅ The posted FINAL EXAM schedule for Section A1 is INCORRECT:. WE NEED TO HOLD THE EXAM CLOSER TO THE FINAL FOR THE A2 SECTION SO THAT WE CAN NORMALIZE THE GRADES.
⋅ The website has been updated with lots of stuff for help with exam 3: First, the derivation for the rate expression for competitive inhibition (which shows you where the (1+[I]/Ki) expression comes from (as well as the M-M derivation)). Second, a page full of links to videos on the serine protease, the Hb conformational change, and protein folding. Third, TWO old exams partially cover this material (2 and 3). Third, a practice sheet for pushing arrows for the serine protease mechanism.
⋅ The "Exams" page now includes the histogram of which questions gave difficulty to students across the class. The 4-5 questions that most students missed from each exam will be on the Final Exam.
⋅ The readings on mechanistic strategies (Ch6, 186-188) are now for the material that will be covered on Exam 3 (Nov 3).
⋅ An example of these strategies using carbonic anhydrase will be posted on the web site.
⋅ Review Session for Exam 2 will be FRIDAY 10/10 at 9:05 AM in CAS 224.
⋅ other announcements were the same as those on Monday 10/6. See below.
⋅ A number of additions to the material that will be covered on exam 2 are available (under Announcements).There is now a table of the phi and psi angles for the structures we discussed, a calculation of the equilibrium shift upon dilution of an oligomeric protein, and the calculation showing that dilution causes dissociation. The web site is up to date with detailed notes that we did Today for the derivation of hyperbolic saturation binding curves as well as further information about collagen melting and collagen disorders are posted. Lastly, the summary table on dimensions for secondary structures is posted.
⋅ Homework #11 is now due a week later due to roblems on NMR. These are due Monday night rather than Sunday due to the Holiday.
⋅ Today is drop deadline. If you did not perform well (<50% or about 2 SD below mean on Exam 1 and/or in Lab-1 or -2 post-lab writeups (<80%)), and don't see a way to improve, consider this deadline. There will be 2 more exams before the W deadline. ALSO, consider attending office hours frequently or if you really need help, I have the name of an excellent Biochem tutor that I can point you to.
LECTURE:
⋅ Regrades for EXAM I will be done by the weekend. If you submitted one on GradeScope during the one-week period, you will have a reply from GradeScope. If you had any change in your score, it will NOT be changed on GradeScope, but will eventually get changed on the Posted Grades on the web site.
⋅ As we did not cover NMR this week, and Homework #11 on Achieve has problems related to NMR, the due date will be changed for Homework #11.
⋅ Announcements page has additions on protein chemistry and a more challenging sequencing problem.
⋅ The Lecture Rosters are posted on the A1 homepage. The Lab Rosters are posted under Lab Rosters on the A1 home page. Your name should appear under the section you requested or are now enrolled. If you are not listed or you are in the wrong section.
⋅ FRIDAY (9/19), Dr. Tolan will host a review session/open office-hour for Exam I in CAS-224 from 9:05-9:55 AM. Bring your questions!
⋅ Web site has additional items the might prove useful to you. Please see the dicarboxylic-acid table and the calculation of pI under Announcements.
⋅ CLASS: be sure to check each week the Web site for the due dates for the upcoming week.
⋅ LAB: Your post-lab writeups for Chapter 1 (week 1) are due at midnight the day of your lab this week, starting today. Please go to office hours if you are having any difficulties.
⋅ HOMEWORK: Homework #5 and #6, as well as Adaptive quizzes 1-3 are due midnight on SUNDAY (9/21).
⋅ Exam 1 will be next Monday at 8 AM. It will be in MORSE. The material for the exam will end on Wednesday, and Friday we'll meet only for ANY questions you might have. Homework #4-5 and quizzes #1-3 are due this Sunday. Quizzes are using a learning tool on Achieve and are graded for effort more than like a normal quiz. They work well for final preparations for the exams.
⋅ Also for PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, the incentive for review of the terms sheet, EXAM 1 will have an additional set of 3 questions coming from that sheet. These will be graded separately and worth another 1% of your final grade.
⋅ Homework assignments 5 and 6 are due this weekend!
⋅ It is noted that the grading of the HW on Achieve is a bit capricious. Please realize the everyone is in the same boat and that the only way to fix this is by contacting Achieve. Reviewing all the HW and correcting them is an impossible task, which is why we discount 25% of them. If you have specific issues with the grading of specific questions, please email those to me so that we can eventually get those fixed.
⋅ The second lab, which begins on Wednesday, starts protein purification. This will be the topic of the lecture on Wednesday.
⋅ The Lab Rosters were posted on the A1 homepage, but there were a number of registrations that MyBU did not have correct (shocker!!). So, we took it down to alleviate any confusion. The Rosters will be re-posted before labs on Monday. Your name should appear under the section you requested or are now enrolled. If you are not listed or you are in the wrong section contact Dr. Blair Szymczyna (Lab Coordinator) as soon as possible. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT DROP ANY SECTION. THE SYSTEM CLOSES YOU OUT. WE WILL SWITCH YOU AROUND.
⋅ Up to date lists of office hours is now posted under Staff. Office hours and locations should be set and accurate; let me know if you go and don’t find any one there. The Matrix will soon appear. Office hours for lab faculty, lab coordinator, and TFs have already started.
⋅ Homework 1, 2, 3, & 4 all due on Sunday night.
⋅ Accommodations for Exam 1 due today. I will act on all of them next week and find a separate venue for your exams.
⋅ Your Molecular Biology Primer and quiz is due by end of the day on Monday Sept. 15. Access the quiz through GradeScope. Instructions for accessing GradeScope are available on the Bb site for the Lab.
⋅ The Lecture and Lab Rosters are posted on the A1 homepage. Your name should appear under the section you requested or are now enrolled. If you are not listed or you are in the wrong section contact Dr. Blair Szymczyna (Lab Coordinator) as soon as possible.
⋅ Up to date lists of office hours is now posted with the new syllabus (v3) and under Staff. Any last minute changes are most likely first posted on the lab Bb site, which also has the TF office hours.
⋅ Office hours for faculty and teaching staff will start soon. Dr. Tolan's starts TODAY (12:20-1:10).
⋅ Additional items for your study will be added to Announcements page on the web site. Today pH problems and Coulomb's lab have been posted.
⋅ The Lecture and "Lab Rosters" will be posted on the A1 homepage by Tuesday. They will be updated regularly so please check before you go to Lab this week. Labs starting Wednesday.
⋅ Up to date lists of office hours will be posted at the end of the week on the web site under Staff. A matrix of ALL office hours will also be there. Dr. Tolan's office hours start Wednesday and are also posted on the staff site and the v3 of the syllabus.
⋅ Please check the current Lecture roster to see if you are in the correct sections for lecture and lab by Monday.
⋅ New items on the Web site: lecture outline/slides; Daily Announcements; syllabi for all sections were not posted due to the fix on the Achieve issue earlier. The web site will be brought up to date by end of day Friday
⋅ Office Hours start next week for faculty, and for TFs, we will announce when they are set.
⋅ If you are in the wrong section or need to change sections, this is the chance to let us know. Dr. Szymczyna sent a form sent out for changing sections.
You will not be able to make section changes yourself! If you try, you will likely drop yourself from the course.
⋅ Prelab Discussions will begin next week (9/9/2025)
⋅ LAB will begin WEDNESDAY (9/10/2025).
THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS
For ALL STUDENTS this will be in SCI 109 at 12:30 PM (C1) or in COM 101 at 2:00 PM (C2) for your first Prelab Discussion.
