Chem 452 Home Page
Announcements
12. December, 2012
- Questions of the Day: How is the movement of bacteria like a bumper car ride?
- The Hand-In Assignment 1 answer key has been posted.
10. December, 2012
- Questions of the Day: How is the movement of vesicles around a cell like a stroll in the park?
- The Exam III answer key has been posted.
4. December, 2012
- The Unit IV and Unit V overheads have been updated through Lecture 10.
- A collection of review questions for Exam III have been posted.
2. December, 2012
- Questions of the Day: Who has better color vision, a human or a mantis shrimp?
- The Quiz 5 answer key has been posted.
- Exam III is scheduled for this coming Friday (7. Dec.) and will cover Units IV (Lectures 7&8) & V (Lectures 9 & 10)
30. November, 2012
- Questions of the Day: How can something sweet be made tasteless?
28. November, 2012
- Questions of the Day: What evolutionary advantages might be derived from each of the five tastes; sweet, salty, umami (savory), bitter and sour?
26. November, 2012
- Questions of the Day: Who is the son of Sevenless?
21. November, 2012
- Questions of the Day: How does the hormone insulin trigger the uptake of glucose in the cells that it targets?
19. November, 2012
- Question of the Day: How is the coffee you drank this morning related to a second messenger?
- The Quiz 4 answer key has been posted.
12. Novermber, 2012
- Question of the Day: What two factors about a molecule influence the change in its free energy as it moves across a membrane?
9. Novermber, 2012
- Question of the Day: How are phospholipids and sphingolipids similar and how are they different?
7. November, 2012
- Question of the Day: What makes a lipid a lipid?
2. November, 2012
- Question of the Day: What is the molecular basis for the different blood types in humans and why are individuals with blood type "O" considered to be universal donors?
- The Exam II answer key has been posted.
28. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: What charateristic of monosaccharides accounts for their large number of possible structures?
- The Quiz 3 answer key has been posted.
- A collection of review questions for Exam II have been posted.
26. October, 2012
- The Quiz 2 answer key has been posted.
24. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: What is the rationale behind using feedback inhibition to regulate metabolism?
19. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: Transition states in enzyme catalyzed reactions are usually very unstable and therefore hard to observe. What was the trick used by investigators to observe the transition state for the the hydrolyis of ATP by the myosin motor domain ATPase? (Lecture 5, Part 3)
17. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: What makes EcoRV a "kinky" enzyme, and how does this character trait help this enzyme to cleave DNA only at its cognate sequence? (Lecture 5, Part 2)
- Quiz 2 (Take-home) [pdf][docx][pages] is due Monday, 22. October, 2012
15. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: What type of substrate sequencing, order sequential, random sequential, or ping-pong, is displayed by the enzyme chymotrypsin? (Lecture 5, Part 1)
10. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: What are the three major types of enzyme inhibition and how can kinetics be used to distinguish between them? (Lecture 4, Part 3)
8. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: Is there some easy way to clock how many reactions one enzyme molecule is able to catalyze in an hour? (Lecture 4, Part 2)
5. October, 2012
- Questions of the Day: Enzymes are biological catalysts. Based on your general understanding of catalysts, what does this statement imply about enzymes? (Lecture 4, Part 1)
3. October, 2012
- Question of the Day: How is hemoglobin, after delivering its cargo, able to return not empty? (Lecture 3, Part 2)
1. October, 2012
- Question of Day: How do the differences in structure between the oxygen transport proteins myoglobin (Mb) and hemoglobin (Hb) make each more best suited for their biological roles?(Lecture 3, Part 1)
- Here is an interactive model of myoglobin bound with oxygen.
- Here is the answer key to the first exam.
25. September, 2012
- The Unit I and Unit II overheads have been updated. I am trying a new format for presenting the overheads online. It does not work with Internet Explorer, so use either Safari, Firfox of Chrome browsers to view them. Let me know if you encounter issues.
24. September, 2012
- Question of the Day: How is online video game-playing is being used to help find cures for diseases? (Lecture 2, Part 4)
17. September, 2012
- Question of the Day: Most proteins are made from a repertoire of 20 different amino acids. A small protein contains around 100 amino acids strung together in a polypeptide chain. How many different possible chains, containing 100 amino acids each, can be made when there are 20 different options for each of the amino acid in a chain? (Lecture 2, Part 3 and Lecture 2, Part 2)
- "A Brief History of the Genome", Le Page, M. (2012), New Scientist, September 15, 2012 (2882), pp30-35.
12. September, 2012
- Question of the Day: Proteins are created in a 1-dimensional world but go on to function in the 3-dimensional world. Explain how this works. (Lecture 2, Part 1)
10. September, 2012
- Question of the Day: This (last) week, big news was made in the field of genomic. It was not only reported in the journals Nature and Science, but was also picked up by the New York Times and the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. What was this news? (Lecture 1, Part 3)
7. September, 2012
- Question of the Day: Watson and Crick made the following observation in their landmark article, which was published in 1953 in the journal Nature:"It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." What are they talking about? (Lecture 1, Part 2)
- The lecture overheads for Lecture 1, Part 1, have been updated
- Hand-in Assignment 1 [pdf][docx] is due Friday, 14. September, 2012
5. September, 2012
- Welcome back!
- Question for the Day: Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry of life processes. From the biology courses you have taken, you no doubt have learned that biological systems are quite diverse, from the extremely small, single cell prokaryotes, such as bacteria, to large multicellular eukaryotes, such as the blue whale. There is no way that we can, in one semester, study the biochemistry of all organisms. Therefore, on day one we will need to discuss which organisms we wish to focus on this semester. Come with some ideas. (Lecture 1, Part 1)
- The Lecture Overheads, Reading Assignments and and Problem Assignments for Unit I, Lecture 1, can be found on the Unit I Lecture Materials Page.