Complements of Molecular Biology

Introduction to Molecular Biology
Structure and properties of biological molecules
DNA
RNA
Proteins
Carbohydrates
Lipids
Molecular Biology Methods Part A
Restriction enzymes.
Hybridization of Southerns.
Principles of cloning.
Cloning vectors.
Construction of a recombinant DNA molecule.
Construction of genomic libraries.
Evolution of Genomes
Primary, secondary and higher order organization of chromatin. The nucleosome: composition and structure. Nucleosome remodeling and histone modifications.
Basic concepts of the cell cycle
DNA replication:
Origins of replication.
Proteins involved in replication
Regulation of replication
Gene Expression:
Mechanisms of transcription in prokaryotes: initiation, elongation, and termination.
Bacterial RNA polymerase. Promoters and their structure. Sigma factors. Regulation at the transcriptional level in prokaryotes (the Lac-Trp operon and phage lambda). Rho-dependent and independent transcriptional termination.
The mechanisms of transcription in eukaryotes: RNA polymerases I, II and III. The transcriptional mechanism operated by RNA polymerase II. The structure of a eukaryotic promoter. The basal transcriptional apparatus and the elements of the "core" promoter. The eukaryotic transcriptional activators: modular structure and function. Techniques for studying transcriptional activators.
RNA maturation: processing of tRNAs and rRNAs, nucleotide modification of tRNAs and rRNAs, mRNA capping and polyadenylation, RNA splicing.
Protein synthesis:
characteristics of ribosomes. Characteristics of tRNAs: secondary and tertiary structure of tRNAs. Activation of amino acids. Aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. The phenomenon of vacillation.
Mode of initiation of protein synthesis in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Stages of protein synthesis in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Levels of regulation of gene expression.
Molecular Biology Methodologies Part B:
Construction of Genomic and cDNA libraries. Northern Blot. qRT-PCR. RNAseq