BMM Advanced Elective Courses

This course covers state-of-the-art approaches to the discovery and design of drugs – from small molecules to antibodies – as well as drug delivery vehicles, with an emphasis on structure-based approaches. Topics to be covered will include: high-throughput screening, fragment based drug discovery, chemical and natural product libraries, protein:drug interactions, use of NMR and X-ray methods in rational drug design, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and fluorescent methods in drug discovery, virtual (in silico) screening, medicinal chemistry, high-yield targets, and use of macromolecular assemblies as drug delivery vehicles.

This course covers the molecular mechanisms of action of various extracellular mediators including hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors, cytokines, etc., and cell signaling events. Several areas will be discussed including: (1) mechanisms of mediator synthesis; (2) interaction of mediators with specific receptors; (3) modulation by mediators of various second messenger systems including cyclic nucleotides, inositol phospholipids, calcium, protein phosphorylation, ion flux, etc.; and (4) intra- and intercellular mechanism for regulating mediator action.

This is a course targeted at students within any of the Graduate Tracks. The objective of the course is to provide a broad view, allowing for in depth consideration in selected areas, of the structure and diverse functions of proteins within a membrane environment. Specific topics to be covered include: ion selective channels, large membrane pores, membrane transporters, membrane pumps, and membrane receptors. The format of the course will be didactic lecture followed by student presentations of relevant topics.

This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of the basic underlying theory of modern pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance methods used to study the structures and internal dynamics of biological macromolecules in solution. The theoretical concepts covered will include an overview of pulse excitation, digital sampling, and fourier tranformation. The product operator formalism will be used to describe how modern multinuclear multidimensional pulse methods function to yield the desired signals. The practical concepts covered will include an overview of modern methods for obtaining sequential resonance assignments, determining high-resolution three-dimensional structures, and analyzing internal dynamics.

This course is intended to provide a solid understanding of hydrodynamics and macromolecular transport processes (sedimentation and diffusion) and hydrodynamic modeling. The focus is on hydrodynamic methods involving analytical ultracentrifugation and small angle X-ray/neutron scattering. Topics include experimental design, sedimentation velocity and sedimentation equilibriumi methods, as well as bead-modeling and molecular dynamics applications for exploring conformational heterogeneity. Macromolecular interactions involving mass action, concentration dependent nonideality and reaction rates are covered. This course will also cover a range of data analysis approaches including the van Holde – Weischet method, the second moment method, direct boundary fitting by finite element modeling using 2-dimensional spectrum and genetic algorithm analysis, as well as custom grid and parameterized spectrum analysis approaches. Also covered will be statistical analysis using Monte Carlo. This course will be offered in the spring semester.