Cell Biology is mostly a mandatory course for a lot of students in Biology and Biochemistry. It really depends on what type of a person you are in your learning style and the way you like to take tests. Some say its boring while others think it is easy and interesting. For me, I'm the interested...

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Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

This course taught by Dr. Dej, was overall a decent course.

I didn't think Dr. Dej was the greatest lecturer, she didn't have a good stage presence, and she was a bit too nice (in that she would pretty much never say to someone that they were misunderstanding something, even when they were. She would just say "well, that's an interesting idea, and it could be right, but in general I think that this way is correct". I really hope that these people caught their mistakes later on).

But she was also extremely nice, helpful, and posted excellent lecture notes. And I found the tests to be very fair.

To be honest, I'm still not sure how the course was broken down. I think midterm 1 was 15% and midterm 2 was 20%. Both midterms were pretty fair. I actually did not so hot on the first one because I was lulled into a false sense of security by her practice problems, but the midterm and exam went much better after I learned that those weren't the best indicator of how well you understood the material (still helpful though).

Their was also an assignment worth 19% (?) of your mark. 15% was for the final draft, 2% was for each peer review check point. Overall the assignment wasn't too bad, probably it will boost your mark. You get a specific protein where a mutation will cause cancer, and then you look at a specific cancer linked to that protein. You write about the protein, its role in the cell cycle, how it mutates, what signalling pathways its involved in, the cancer itself, how it metastasises, treatments, etc. I can't remember how long it was supposed to be, but I think it was about 6 pages double spaced. Marking seemed fair enough.

The exam was also pretty fair. It was worth 35%, and was a pretty good representation of what we learned. It was focused on the material from after the last midterm, and didn't really involve much application. Mainly it was memorizing and understanding concepts.

I liked this course overall, and would recommend taking it.

Which optional material would you recommend purchasing?

To be honest, you don't need to buy anything for this class.

I ended up buying the 5th edition of the listed book, (Molecular Cell Biology), it was somewhat helpful since I'm so bad at taking notes, but after a friend started letting me photocopy his notes I stopped using it. I probably wouldn't have bought it, but the tank had it for thirty something dollars. If you're the type of person who likes using a textbook to clarify ideas, then it might be worth getting for you.

The 6th edition is like $120 though, and not worth the cash. If you (or anyone) is interested in buying the 5th edition, shoot me a PM :p

Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

To be honest, you don't need to buy anything for this class.

I ended up buying the 5th edition of the listed book, (Molecular Cell Biology), it was somewhat helpful since I'm so bad at taking notes, but after a friend started letting me photocopy his notes I stopped using it. I probably wouldn't have bought it, but the tank had it for thirty something dollars. If you're the type of person who likes using a textbook to clarify ideas, then it might be worth getting for you.

The 6th edition is like $120 though, and not worth the cash. If you (or anyone) is interested in buying the 5th edition, shoot me a PM :p

Yeah, I like using textbooks. How different are those two editions?

i didnt find them very different in terms of content. that said, the order (e.g. of chapters and material) is very different but in our year dr dej provided references to the text from both 5th and 6th edition. if that still holds true, the 5th edition is fine.

Yeah, Dej gave us the chapter numbers from both versions still.

My thoughts on the course:

- Dont buy the textbook, google hard enough and you can find the online 5th edition

-Dr Dej is super super nice and a has the most straight forward questions on tests/exam.

-Overall I thought the course was very very easy (I expected it to be a bit challenging)

I took this class in fall 2009 with Dr. Dej. This class is really interesting but can get confusing at times. As for the textbook, if you have Dr. Dej, you don't really need it unless you don't understand something from the notes. Her tests never cover anything from the textbook that's not in her notes so just study off her notes. If you're going to buy the book, don't bother buying the 6th ed cause 5th ed is fine (her notes include both ed). The tests are fine as long as you study her notes. The tutorials are not mandatory, you just go if you need help for the assignment (just 1 on enyme kinetics) or the paper (worth 15% on a protein and the cancer associated with it).

I'm taking this now, and really enjoying it
With Dr. Igdoura it's a little different, we have 2 tutorial quizes and a 60 percent exam
we get a Review article related to the information learned in class that week, and we go to tutorial to discuss it, and then have 2 weeks to write a 700-900 word summary of it.

He recomends you read the textbook (5th or 6th edn) for lectures, and I find it helps to explain the material.

So I would like to update my review and say: I had Dr. Igdoura
1. The exam was 60 percent, cumulative, and based on memorization and 90 MC quns
2. The TA`s take off rediculous marks in the summaries (ie. adding more detail would mean it is not a summary anymore...)
3. what does pex5 associate with (fml) retarded MC questions

Originally Posted by salimak

3. what does pex5 associate with (fml) retarded MC questions

It's a molecular biology course, what do you expect? :|

Originally Posted by Jay

It's a molecular biology course, what do you expect? :|

Oh I am so sorry, you're right, a second year molecular biology class should ask for every detail and interacting molecule and acronymn to be memorized from the entire course, what was I thinking. This whole idea of application questions is so foreign to me, please let us have mindless memorizing questions so when we all graduate we will make it in the "real world".

Originally Posted by salimak

Oh I am so sorry, you're right, a second year molecular biology class should ask for every detail and interacting molecule and acronymn to be memorized from the entire course, what was I thinking. This whole idea of application questions is so foreign to me, please let us have mindless memorizing questions so when we all graduate we will make it in the "real world".

This is the same excuse that was used in Eukaryote Genetics. Should courses be all about memorizing? No. But in Molecular courses, it's necessary to know the pathways in order to actually apply information. When trying to answer a question about cell-cycle arrest, you can't just say that "p53 is activated". You need to understand that the dissociation of inhibitory factors like Mdm2 allows the activation of cell repair/apoptosis pathway.

It's like saying "Oh, I shouldn't expect to know what will happen to heart rate and alveolar ventilation during high altitude acclimation" in a physiology course.

This is coming from someone who hates molecular biology.

I'm fairly certain if a proffesor doesn't know what pex5 (random acronyms)associates with then its clearly not as important as p53 (main concept)
Does that make sense to you? We has a 60 percent exam and it wasn;t a course just on cancer, so I understand testing pathways and interactions of important intermediates but not quizing on little details that are not going to help you understand the main process.
It was a good course but you really need to keep up with your notes at least

Biology 2B03, Fall/Winter 2010 with Dr. Igdoura (Term 2)

Course Outline attached.

Lectures:
The lectures were pretty interesting, I never fell asleep in any of the classes despite it being at 9:30 in the morning (extremely early for me). Dr. Igdoura is pretty good at communicating the information. I just didn't like how he picks students to answer questions. If students don't want to answer questions then don't force them to. Sadly I didn't find enough correlation between the lectures and the articles, meaning I started to skip lectures as the term went on.

Tutorials/Articles:
The articles were a good read, they were summaries of research papers so they were easier to understand but still needed a couple read overs to understand them completely. The tutorials themselves were helpful in understanding the articles but the summaries we had to write were a pain.

Tutorials Tests:
A test bank was given which was really helpful, I found that the questions really help drill in the topics of the article. Sadly the questions were written by students so there were a lot of ambiguities. Tests were easy if you went through the test bank since the questions were taken from it. Both tests were out of 40 marks, first test bank had like 400 questions and the second had about 300, all multiple choice.

Exam: The exam focused entirely on the lectures, sadly some questions were about topics talked in classed that weren't on the slides (but that were in the articles). But since they were mentioned in class they were still part of the lectures. Exam was 90 multiple choice questions all written by the prof. Some were taken from the practice exam.

Overall the way the course was structured was horrible but the material was interesting because of the articles.

Took it with Dr. Igdoura in second term 2009/2010

TONS of complaints from many students in the course on elm after exam. Many didn't like the 60% exam that had 90 knowledge-based questions, no application questions.

Yes, the summaries/articles were brutal to go through but we had two weeks for each and the TAs made powerpoints to sum up important concepts that we should include into our summary. I found it a valuable experience to learn to read these review articles and summarize them. Though becacuse of shortage of TAs, the cap for the summaries went from 1500 to 900 (which was a little hard to fit when the review articles avged 15 pages)

Didn't like the fact that the tutorial test questions were student based. They said it was a new approach to learning and were trying it out. The thing with student-based questions is that some people are really dumb and don't proofread (either mistakes/typos in their questions or chose the wrong answer to their own question when submitting). Didn't help that the questions on the test didn't seem to by proofread by the prof/TA. We had a question bank, the second test came with the answers as well so it was pretty much blatant memorization of the questions/answers for those that didn't want to study the review articles and actually know the details.

Don't need the new edition of the textbook. I bought the 5th one and maybe around 5 diagrams in lectures were from the new edition but the old textbook would cover it in the text if one really didn't understand. I studied many diagrams through just reading the captions under the diagrams in the texbook and that sufficed to clear up any foggy details.

I wish we either spent more time on cancer or had that project that 1st term students had cuz that was a really interesting topic.