Biology and Genetics

In recent years, the importance of developing advanced therapies (gene therapy, cell therapy, genome editing, etc.), personalized medicine or rationally inferred therapeutic approaches based on the pathological molecular defects has become increasingly evident. These therapies make use of continuous and exponential advances in molecular and cellular biology. The objective of this module is therefore to provide the future medical doctor with the adequate knowledge and tools to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying various human pathologies and/or the available therapeutic treatments.
In particular, the main goal of the Cell Biology lessons is to contribute to the education of a medical doctor who will know:
signaling pathways that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, transformation and finally death of an eukaryotic cell;
the main experimental models used in preclinical research to study the basic cell biology phenomena and to model specific classes of human pathologies.


The lessons of Molecular Biology, instead, will allow the future doctor to know:
· the main molecular mechanisms involved in the correct flow of genetic information and its maintenance;
· the consequences associated with defects in the molecular processes mentioned above and the possible molecular approaches aimed at their normalization;
· the main molecular biology techniques useful for biomedical research, molecular diagnosis, the development of advanced therapies.

Acquire a good knowledge of:
1. the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells;
2. the communication mechanisms between cells, signal transduction within cells, replication regulation, stem cell formation, cell death and neoplastic transformation;
3. the different mechanisms of receptor activation and their regulation with the aim of understanding the intracellular signaling pathways and their impact on the cell physiology;
4. the structure and function of the main cellular macromolecules;
5. the main cellular and animal models used to understand the basic cellular mechanisms and to model human pathologies;
6. the molecular basis of genetic information maintenance (replication and repair), its expression and regulation (transcription, transcription maturation, protein synthesis, epigenetics);
7. the main molecular biology techniques useful for analyzing the DNA sequence, studying gene expression, even at a global level;
8. the main techniques of genetic engineering;
9. the importance of molecular biology for the diagnosis and treatment of some human pathologies.