BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine

5 CAL tests(10%), 2 MSTs(10% each), 2 exams (70%)

Even after my seniors told me 1st year bio was nothing compared to MCB, I still did not expect MCB to be such a difficult subject.

Lectures
Unlike 1st year bio where you can catch up during the weekends if you are one week behind, there are 6-7 lectures every week for MCB. Not only the number of lectures is doubled, the amount of content in one lecture is also increased. There are so many details to remember across 5 different topics. This subject focuses on rote-memorising, nothing can be done by understanding. Most of the time I walked out from the lecture hall not understanding anything.

MSTs
You have to prepare for 30 lectures for each MST. Some of the lecturers only finish going through the final lectures needed few days before the MST. If you think you can be ready by preparing 2 weeks before the MST, you are wrong. (I know this because that was what I did). You actually have to go through every lecture right after it is finished to remember all the details.

CAL tests
Everyone should be aiming for 10% for this. Many people "collaborate" to get full marks on these. The first two CALs did not help with understanding the content but the rest are pretty useful. The test for CAL 3 is only open for 10 minutes and we have to answer 10 questions, which is really ridiculous.

Exam
Paper A is made up of MCQs. It was reasonable for most of it but some question tested really little details which were overlooked by many.
Paper B is made up of short answer questions. They say short answer questions but actually it's just many short essays. Some questions were allocated too many marks, e.g two autoimmunity questions for 8 marks each. Really? There are only like two main points on this subtopic. I also did not know what many of the questions want us to write, even if I spent more time preparing I don't think I can answer them. I totally do not understand how some people manage to do well on this paper.


This is a terrible subject which does not require understanding. It's like forcing yourself to eat a lot until you feel like puking then vomiting everything during the exams. MCB is the worst subject I've taken so far, even worse than EDDA(boring stats subject). I'm very disappointed with the mark I got but I'm also just glad that it's now over.

Yes, with screen capture

Dr Terry Mulhern (topic 1)
Dr Michael Murrary, Dr Trent Perry, Dr Marnie Blewitt (topic 2)
Associate Professor Robb de Iongh, Associate Profesor Gary Hime (topic 3)
Professor Roy Robins-Browne, Professor Lorena Brown, Dr Odilia Wijburg (topic 4)
Dr Vicki Lawson (topic 5)

3. 2010,2011 and 2013

2 Out of 5 (Unpopular opinion I know)

not needed

7 lectures every week (some are used as workshops), 5 CALs(one of them has a prac over 2 weeks)

2016, Semester 1

H3(67)

MST1 10% MST2 10% CAL/Pracs 10% (2% each) Exam 1 35% Exam 2 35%

Before I get started on the review element, it's probably worthwhile explaining how MCB is structured. There are five topics in MCB. These cover Biochem, Genetics, Cell Biology, Micro/Immuno and Pathology. Strictly speaking, these topics should match up (content wise) with the science equivalents that are replaced by MCB. So out of double credit points you cover what science would do in five subjects. Naturally, much of the content is sacrificed but I'll return to that later.
You progress through these topics at a pretty quick pace, spending 2-3 weeks on each. The idea is that the topics should be integrated, and in many ways they actually are. This particularly applies to assessment, with questions drawing content from a number of topics at a time.
Every couple of weeks you have to sit a CAL as well, then do a test after it. These tests are essentially free marks and the CALs are designed to complement your learning. Cell Biol and Biochem are probably the only CALs that do. The details of these CALs are relatively unimportant. Micro/Immuno replaces its CAL with a prac instead, wherein you use a number of lab tests to identify a bacterium. It's kind of fun because of medical context but again, not particularly useful.

Now to the review...

MCB has a reputation for being a really, really tough subject. All of the second years told us last year that we simply couldn't complain about any of our first year subjects and that we'd be in for the surprise of our lives when we got to MCB. Sadly, they were absolutely correct. MCB is by far the most challenging subject I have taken thus far at Uni. With 6-8 lectures a week, and each of them jammed full of content, MCB puts a huge strain on even the best of students.

It's not the concepts so much that are difficult. In actual fact, they're really quite simply and more often than not are really interesting. The sheer amount of content you have to contend with, however, is enormous. Though this subject is essentially worth two (on paper), it really is worth about four first year subjects...that being a standard unit of measurement and all. The level of detail you're expected to know is staggering. The tiniest throw-away line by the lecturer more often than not will be examined. This is not a "broad concepts" or "basic ideas" subject. If it is said, even the smallest of details, you must know it. The assessment tends to focus on that as well. There are some broad scope questions, but more often than not the assessment for this subject will test you on your ability to regurgitate minute details.

With that said, the coordinator and the student centre do go to great lengths to make you understand at the start of this subject that this is the hard subject. It brings out the best in everyone (student wise). The first few weeks and everybody's knuckling down. Everyone knows that they've been set a really difficult challenge and everyone knows that when they started the subject shit just got real. This can make MCB quite an enjoyable subject. The content is interesting. It's content that most biomed students like (being biology mainly) and a crazy challenge has been set. For a group of neurotic biomeds, all of whom have worked their arses off for that 99+ ATAR, this is just like being back in VCE.

To get a little bit more specific, however, the lectures are usually of a high standard. Each of the lecturers is good and easy to follow, with perhaps a few minor exceptions. Terry was extremely engaging and clearly passionate about his content. He had a habit of waffling and forgetting to explain things from time, but all credit to him, I'm a hopeless chem student and managed to get through Biochem so he must be pretty bloody good! Brendon was my personal favourite (though most of my friends disagree with me). He wasn't the most engaging lecturer, but he explained things very, very clearly and his lectures were by far the best set out. He also, unlike many lecturers, focused on the big points. What he really heavily focused on was what he tested the most. This was a godsend. Trent was a bit nervous and was all over the shop, which was a shame because developmental genetics is really quite tricky. Marnie spoke at one billion miles an hour though if you rewatched her lecture at half speed I'm told she was very easy to understand. She also structured her lectures really well and was really clear about what she wanted from you. Robb was pretty good. He had a habit of skipping over some of the difficult things a bit sometimes, but otherwise he was pretty easy to follow through some pretty complex content at times. Gary was also not too bad. Gary's content really needed no explaining. It was rote so there's not much you can really say about him. Roy was entertaining though he didn't explain anything, instead spending far too much time on his stories. I loved him at the time, but in Heinz sight he was probably the weakest of the lecturers. That was compounded by mixed messages he tended to send, e.g. "you don't need to remember the details of this bacterium" then giving us countless exam questions about the details of bacteria. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when none of his questions showed up on the written exam. Lorena was gorgeous. She explained things really well and was just the sweetest woman in the world. When she came back for a review lecture, she came up and said good morning to everyone, which prompted the whole lecture theatre to go "AWWWW" in unison. Poor thing went as red as a tomato! Odilia was a bit difficult to understand. She was a bit hit and miss really. Some of her lectures were brilliant, others were hopelessly difficult. Vicki was much like Odilia. Chris was very interesting and engaging but should have been a bit more familiar with Vicki's lectures so as to make the comparison between acute and chronic inflammation. Tom was brilliant. He really expected nothing from us and was hands down the funniest lecturer I've ever had in my life. Quote of the semester was definitely "and then they started singing the dumb arses".

The CALs are really a waste of time. They'd be better spending their money to give students an opportunity to go and ask tutors some questions. There really is nowhere students can go to ask questions because of the lack of funding the subject gets, so CALs may actually be a good way to do that. They had minor benefits, but the time spent on CALs and the benefit you got from them really didn't match up enough as far as I'm concerned. All the CALs were was pictures of experiments that we should've been doing ourselves. I can only imagine that CAL really does stand for "Can't Afford Labs".

No point talking about the workshops. They're lectures. All except for Vicki's workshop (which was given by one of her students; absolute champ!). Hers actually did a good job of integrating the information presented in her lectures and was nice revision. The rest were just used to go over some questions or finish lectures.

Assessment wise the CAL tests are easy marks. The MSTs are tough. I, in particular, found MST2 (immuno/micro/cell bio) particularly difficult. I had about a 15% drop between the two, so yeah, real difference. The shift in the averages wasn't actually as profound as my shift, so I think that probably says more about my strengths and weaknesses than anything else. The MSTs require you to know everything pretty much. Know every tiny detail presented in the lecture and you'll be sweet. The first exam is all MCQ and is essentially the same as the MSTs. The difficulty is the same. You really do need to know everything and stay on top of everything. That's where the marks go, particularly if you're aiming for that high H1. The second exam is long answer questions. The format got changed this year so they were more like short answer questions. It was a welcome change, but my god that was a difficult exam. Again, you needed to know the minute details of really complicated processes to get full marks on the questions. If you forgot a few slides worth of content, there were 6 marks gone. You really need to push and get all the details down to get all of the marks as well, a tough ask with the short amount of time you have. Most people I know didn't finish. Regrettably, I was among them (although only like half a sentence damn it!). The assessment's tough and punishing. I know the content of this subject pretty well and have worked my arse off more than for any subject and I'm still not confident I'll pull an H1 for this subject. All credit to the coordinator though, the questions were beautifully integrated at all levels. You get a real sense that the lecturers are actually communicating with one another and have actually put the effort in to integrate their topics.

It must be said that this subject is well coordinated. In fact, it's probably the best coordinated subject I've studied. This is an incredibly difficult, huge subject, but it runs extremely smoothly. The lecturers actually talk to one another and have sat down together to make sure that their content is actually relevant to one another. They constantly reference each other's lectures and each other's content. Robb (the coordinator) also goes to great lengths to ensure that the assessment is fair. If a question is the slightest bit ambiguous, it's struck off. As one of the student reps for this subject, I got a great sense of how much Robb was doing to make sure that this subject ran smoothly. Incredibly, it actually did. A lot of that fell to him.

At the end of the day, MCB is a nice challenge and the content is interesting. It is actually quite an enjoyable subject sometimes, if somewhat daunting. A lot of people drop their load so they can take this subject; you could hardly blame them. Indeed, it's probably a sensible decision. The real gripe I had with this subject—even though I enjoyed it—is what its aims are. This subject does not encourage you to think. There's no time for that. There's no time to engage with the material and really not much of an opportunity to do so. MCB is far, far too focused on content and the minute details. I know that most will retort "if you can't handle it, don't do biomed" but to me that seems a really defeatist and narrow minded perspective. We study biomed to become good doctors or good scientists. MCB contributes to neither; though it is certain to make you a brilliant encyclopaedia.

EDIT (2016): in hindsight, my criticisms of MCB's focus on minutiae were probably somewhat unfair. MCB is typically the first experience Biomed students have of needing to remember a hell of a lot of detail, which overwhelms a lot of people—me included. With the benefit of having now finished Biomed, I appreciate MCB a lot more. Throughout the rest of my degree and even now MCB did serve as the basis for a lot of what I learned. I was really thankful to have been introduced to so many fields in MCB and to be able to take that to other areas. So if you are feeling overwhelmed and don't like the detail, I hope you can at least appreciate that you've just completed/are about to study one of the most useful subjects of your degree!

Yes with screen capture

Terry Mulhern: 1-16 (Biochemistry: amino acids, protein structure, enzyme kinetics, metabolism, lipids/membranes, nucleic acids)
Brendon Monahan: 17-23, 28 (Genetics: basics, gene regulation, transcription/translation, ENCODE project, cancer and cell cycle)
Trent Perry: 24-25 (Genetics: developmental genetics, environmental interactions)
Marnie Blewitt: 26-27 (Genetics: epigenetics)
Robb de Iognh: 29-34, 38-41 (Cell Biology: protein sorting, cell signalling)
Gary Hime: 35-37 (Cell Biology: cytoskeleton, extracellular matrix)
Roy Robins-Browne: 42-47 (Microbiology: bacteria, antibiotics)
Lorena Browne: 48-50 (Microbiology: viruses)
Odilia Wijburg: 51-56 (Immunology: innate immune system, B-cell response, T-cell response)
Vicki Lawson: 57-63 (Pathology: acute inflammation, cell death, immune mediated injury, wound healing)
Chris Hopkins: 64 (Pathology: chronic inflammation)
Tom Karagiannis: 66-67 (Pathology: neoplasia)

Yes, 2010 and 2011 both without answers.

4 out of 5

Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts). Utterly useless.

6-8 lectures per week, 1-2 tutorials per week, 1 CAL (3hr) per fortnight

2014 Semester 1

89 (H1)

2 x 30 min MCQ mid-semester tests (10% each), 2 x 2 hour exams (35% each), 5 x CAL/prac assessments (2% each).

This is probably the most whinged about subject in the entire degree. I think most of the criticism that this subject gets is unfair and unwarranted. We are studying a Biomedicine degree. I don't really know what people expected to learn, but if you didn't want to learn about this type of stuff, then I guess you are in the wrong degree. People often complain that the content is over the top, irrelevant and can just be looked up if you ever need it. Firstly, this is NOT a medical degree, it is biomedical science. It is expected that you will learn detailed cellular processes. Everyone just wants to learn things on a macroscopic scale or things which are relevant to medicine. This is not what a biomedical science degree is about. Also, sure you can look a lot of these things up if you ever need them, but you should learn them properly at least once and this makes sure that you actually understand them. Moreover, this subject is somewhat of a 'taste' of what it is like to study medicine in terms of content and study required, so again, if people cannot handle this, then they are probably going to struggle in medicine. I also understand that topics such as biochemistry and patholgy are actually studied in medicine anyway, so you are just getting an advantage by learning some of it now. I am also under the impression that content wise, HSF in semester 2 will be far more intensive than MCB.

For the first time, this exam was completely electronic. There were 75 marks of MCQs and 45 marks of fill in the blanks/menu style questions which you complete on the Section B/C Answer sheets. This exam was ridiculously specific, moreso than the MSTs. No matter how much you learn, I think some lecturer will always have one annoying MCQ which you never thought would come up. As always, you can expect a few MCQs which have mistakes and get removed. Alex Andrianopoulos is also pretty lazy and may slip in a few 2 mark MCQs.

The fill in the blanks section is actually pretty hard for several reasons. Firstly, you can always rely on a lecturer to give you a tiny diagram which is unclear and almost impossible to see. Secondly, you get next to no marks for each blank (0.5 marks each). So when you have 14 blanks to complete in just 7 minutes, it is not so easy. Thirdly, it is so easy to screw up the answer sheet when you are putting in your answers so I urge you to double and triple check the circles you colour in.

You really want to be doing well on this exam to buffer against the written paper.

This exam was also for the first time entirely composed of short answer questions and extended response questions. I like the way they structured the exams this year. It was far less confusing than in previous years where you had a mix of electronic marking and written answers on the same exam. This exam was around a week after the first exam. This is supposed to be an integration exam where lecturers get together and integrate their topics. This is another lie. It is very obvious as to who has written what questions, and there was little continuity between lecturers who had 'supposedly' written their questions together.

This exam is not easy at all. It requires a really good understanding of everything, good memory, fast recall and also the ability to write very fast and also to draw diagrams. There are lots of heavily weighted questions worth 10, 12, 13 marks on this section. You get a few simple 3-5 mark questions as well though. Just make sure you that you absolutely spend no more minutes than marks per question, otherwise you will not finish. Once you think you have written enough to get the allocated marks, it is probably wise to move on, even if you have more to say. You can always come back and add in more at the end, time permitting. For the 10 mark questions, you absolutely must fill the page with writing. Similarly, the 12 and 13 mark questions probably expect around 1.5-2 pages of writing (font and back) by the time you add in diagrams. To indirectly quote the lecturer himself, "lecturers love diagrams and diagrams are always appropriate". That having been said, don't waste ages drawing flashy stuff. You have to ensure you finish the paper. I finished the exam with about 8 mins to spare. When I did the 2011 as a trial, I had literally 2 mins to spare. You will be very pressed for time so make sure you have a watch and time everything perfectly, right down to the minute. Your responses can be either in paragraphs or dot points. Do whatever you feel is best going to address the question in the time you are given. For some unknown reason I tend to randomly switch between writing paragraphs and dot points in different questions.

I thought that this exam would be really bad for me but in the end it was actually pretty good. I kind of miss being able to actually demonstrate what you know rather than just filling in circles, so take this exam as an opportunity to impress the lecturer and demonstrate what you know. They have a marking scheme, but at the end of the day, going into more detail about a process or giving examples is guaranteed to pick you up extra marks. Also, make sure you write at least something for every question. Lecturers are pretty lenient and like to give out marks where they can. Ultimately, this exam is just like any other. You just have to work out what lecture(s) the question is testing, decide what is relevant and then splurge it onto the paper.

The final lecture in the subject addresses the exams, giving you a breakdown of marks and telling you who has been allocated to write questions with who. This is useful and allows you to try and predict the integration questions. For example, we all knew that the 'integration' between cell biology and genetics would be about cancer...why else would the cell biology lecturer spend a whole workshop discussing cancer? You can work out so much of what you need to know, just from listening to the things which the lecturers say, and even from the way they word questions. Another example was a lecturer who never made the definitive statement (i.e. only, must etc.) the right option. This tends to be the case for most MCQs.

Yes, including screen capture.

• Terry Mulhern [Coordinator] (Biochemistry, 18 Lectures)
• Dawn Gleeson, Alex Andrianopoulos (Genetics, 12 Lectures)
• Robb De Iongh (Cell Biology, 13 Lectures)
• Roy Robins-Browne, Sandra Uren (Microbiology & Immunology, 13 Lectures)
• Vicki Lawson (Pathology, 11 Lectures)

Each topic has had 2 lecturers in previous years, but a lot of lecturers have dropped away recently. There were also a couple of guest lecturers in the Genetics and Pathology topics. All in all, I thought the majority explained their content well. It doesn't necessarily mean that I liked them all, but I don't really care as long as they are clear. Dawn and Alex have a tendency to get their stuff confused. Vicki Lawson cannot go 15 seconds without screwing up her sentence. Lecture notes across the board were decent. That having been said, Dawn and especially Roy required you to listen and write down lots of things that weren't on the slides, and believe me, if the lecturer says it, it is assessable.

Looking back (and I say this a lot haha) this subject probably wasn't so bad. I really enjoyed the first four topics, and could actually see myself majoring in any of them. Pathology on the other hand I didn't enjoy. Whether or not that was because it seemed overly rushed and was badly taught, I don't know. Initially you will probably find that you will hate everything. I went back and listened to each lecture after attending, and found it was always easier the second time. I wrote down all of the relevant points that weren't in the slides and then typed it out into notes. However you do your notes, make sure you include all of the important pictures and know how to draw them because lecturers love diagrams in the exam. You don't even have to go to lectures if you don't want to as everything is recorded and I find that I tend to learn better at home or in the library.

Lots of people seem to do poorly on these for some reason and I cannot understand why. They are multi choice. It is a pretty simple equation in the end. If you put in the time and effort to learn everything, then you should do really well on these tests. 95% of this subject is pure rote learning/recall. I don't really think you can be tricked. The only two things which we learnt that required any level of conceptual understanding were enzyme kinetics (biochemistry) and the lac operon (genetics). These tests do not cover the last topic (pathology) and therefore there are extra patholgy MCQs on the exam to compensate. All in all, this is a straight forward 20% take one or two if you have done your work. As I said earlier, absolutely make sure you get hold of previous years MSTs one way or another because they could repeat the questions and are good practice.

Around a week after the MSTs, the results are published on the LMS and the relevant lecturers explain the questions to you in a feed back lecture.

There is so much I could tell you about this subject, but I'll try to be concise here:

Biochemistry

• Know the amino acids, single letter codes, three letter codes, resonance structures, properties and how to draw peptides and how the amino acids interact with one another.
• Understand the chemical interactions involved and basic thermodynamics and be able to explain them.
• Know the Ramachandran plot, as well as all of the properties of b-sheets and a-helices, including how to draw a rough schematic.
• Know every step, including enzymes and cofactors, of glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, glycogenolysis, glycogenesis, TCA cycle, electron transport chain as well as a few other reactions which you are given. You need to be able to recognize and name all of the molecules, but not draw them.
• Have a solid understanding of enzyme kinetics.
• Know all of the signalling pathways relating to glucogon, insulin, adrenaline etc.
• Know all of the diseases discussed in this part of the course.

Genetics

• Know the key structures of chromosomes and how they are replicated.
• Learn all the steps in transcription and translation, contrasting prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
• Know the relevance of epigenetic marks and how they affect gene expression.
• Make sure you understand tumour supressor genes and how you can identify them.
• Make sure you know about the types of mutations which can lead to cancer (oncogenic/tumour suppressor).
• The lac operon as well as other types of positively and negatively acting transcriptional systems are important to understandand at a conceptual level.
• There hasn't been a big emphasis on development in prokaryotes and eukaryotes in the past, at least for the written exam.
• Suppressor mutations always come up in a big question in the final exam.
• Be able to interpret gels, as they are bound to come up somewhere.

Cell Biology

• Understand the concept of topology.
• Know the various mechanisms and processes by which proteins are trafficked around the cell, including the steps and diagrams.
• Know all the properties and features of the cytoskeleton (actin filaments, intermediate filaments and microtubules).
• Know all the details of epithelial tissue including cell junctions and the electron micrographs which are given in the slides.
• Understand all of the features of connective tissue, includuing fibrous proteins, adhesive proteins and proteoglycans.
• Know all of the signalling pathways which you get taught in detail, including how to draw them. The important ones seem to be MAPK, Wnt/b-catenin and TGFb signalling. Explain how these pathways cause cancer.
• Explain the characteristics of epithelial to mesenchymal cell transition, which is the transformation of benign growths to malginant tumours.

Micro/Immunology

• Know all of the features of bacteria, and how they contribute to virulence, including the experiemental evidence for this, especially toxins, fimbriae and capsids.
  
• Know examples and charactersitics of lots of different bacteria with different features. Roy's favourite's are Clostridium sp. and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
• Know how bacteria are classified both in the lab and also how species/subspecies are determined.
• Know how different drugs work against bacteria and the mechnisms of the ones which you are taught.
• Know the viral life cycle, including examples for different types of viruses (ss/dsDNA and ss/dsRNA) and how they replicate.
• Know some antiviral drugs and how they work.
• Know the details of polio virus, poliomyelitis and how the Salk and Sabin vaccines vary in prevention of contracting Polio.
• Understand how the innate immune system operates, and the key effectors, especially the complement system.
• Understand the mechanisms and effector cells of humoral and cell mediated immunity.
• Be able to describe how antibodies and T-cell receptors are generated.
• Know the structure of antibodies, T-cell receptors and MHC molecules to the level of detail given in the slides.
• Be able to explain the mechanisms by which pathogens evade the immune system and provide examples of such pathogens.

Pathology

• Know the different types of necrosis.
• Know the different types of cell adaptations.
• Know the difference between necrosis and apoptosis and the causes/pathways for each.
• Know the cause, process, regulation, characteristics and types of acute inflammation.
• Know all of the different types of hypersensitivities and the examples given for each.
• Understand the basis for an excessive immune response and immune deficiencies, as well as examples (e.g. allergy, AIDS).
• Understand the process of transplant rejection.
• Understand the different cells types and their capacity to regenerate.
• Know the process of wound healing by regeneration and by repair using connective tissue, as well as the repair process for cutaneous wounds and the complications which may arise.
• Understand the mechanism and characteristics of chronic inflammation, as well as the causes and macroscopic appearance.
• Understand the transformation, causes and epidemiology of cancer. Be able to appreciate and explain the genetic and cellular changes which occur in cancer cells.
• Describe the properties of cancer cells, and how these can be exploited to identify cancer masses.
• Be familiar with the signalling pathways that may cause cancer.
• Understand how cancers are graded and described.

[/list]

Both 2010 exams are available from the library website. Only the short answer and fill in the gap questions were provided from the 2011 exam. None of the 2011 MCQs were given. Also, make sure you annoy the coordinator to put up the 2010 and 2011 MSTs because he wouldn't want a repeat of what happened this year, with people just going and getting them off the third years and some people missing out and others not. The coordinator also refuses to give out any sort of answers or marking schemes for anything. Exams prior to 2010 are not available, but the old subject "Integrated Biomedical Sciences" has lots of past exam papers available. I didn't do any of them, but having a quick look at them now they certainly still look relevant so if you want some extra writing practice, they may be worth looking at.

This is another easy 10% so make sure you go and don't miss any. The Biochemistry CAL was annoying because you had to hand up a worksheet at the end which is marked. Everything else was assessed with online MCQ tests either during or after the Prac/CAL. IMO it is not worth learning anything from the Biochem/Pathology/Cell Bio CALs for the exam. It would be wise to make sure you are at least familiar with the pracs though, as in genetics, you need to know how to interpret gels for the exam, and you learn a fair bit of stuff on bacterial classification in the microbiology & immunology pracs which could also arise on the exam.

4.5/5

• Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", 5th Edition
• Nelson D, Cox M, "Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry", 5th edition
• Griffiths AJF et al., "Introduction to Genetic Analysis", 10th edition
• Engleberg NC et al., “Schaechter's Mechanisms of Microbial Disease” 4th edition
• Kumar V et al., 'Robbins Basic Pathology', 8th edition

To be perfectly honest, you probably don't need any of these textbooks to do well. That having been said, luckily they are all available online so you can access them at your leisure if you know where to look. The two most helpful are Alberts, which is a general Cell Biology book that covers a lot of the course, and Kumar, which covers Pathology. Seeing as pathology is taught woefully and IMO is the worst part of this subject, it is probably worth reading the relevant parts of Kumar for the topic. Luckily, Kumar is available online from the library website, so again, no need to buy. I wouldn't be able to tell you about the other textbooks because I never even looked at them once, despite having them all on pdf. In reality, all you are ever going to get assessed on in this subject is either what is on the slides, or what the lecturer says. If you have all of this down, you're sure to do well.

6 x lectures each week, 1 x workshop each week, 3 x CALs (computer aided learning) throughout semester, 3 x practicals throughout semester.

Calling these workshops is a blatant lie by the university. It is an extra lecture spot in case the lecturer runs out of time in their allocated time. Usually, the lecturer will cover some non-examinable extension stuff or do some revision/FAQs in this time. The cell biology workshop and immunology workshop however were very important and you had to study them. The content in these two workshops accounted for nearly one-fifth of what was on our second exam. The cell bio workshop was on cancer, and considering that is this an overall theme on the course, it was fairly obvious that is was going to be tested. The immunology workshop was on how pathogens evade the immune system.

2012, Semester 1

96 H1