This course encompasses an area of biological chemistry that you will probably find different from other chemistry courses that you have taken. The reason is that biochemistry is truly a hybrid discipline. The more cellular and sub-cellular biology that you have studied as an undergraduate (e.g., cell biology, genetics, microbiology and molecular biology), the easier you will find this material. The less biology that you studied as an undergraduate, the more challenging you will find this material. This course deals with information metabolism, i.e., the molecules that contain genetic information, provide the primary sequence information necessary to correctly synthesize the cell's protein and nucleotide polymers, and interact with environmental and developmental cues to correctly and differentially regulate the expression of appropriate structural and catalytic elements.
Is this material more intellectually challenging than the other chemistry course modules in our series? No. However, it does have the highest proportion of biology and, consequently, the highest content of non-chemistry vocabulary. Biology is (unfortunately) a separate discipline from chemistry, with its own language and culture. For many chemists, biology is a foreign language. Take this simple test: If you can't define the difference between the different pairs of terms below in a simple sentence, then you will need to pay special attention to developing expertise with the language of biology as you work through this course. This is not meant to discourage you from taking the course, but rather to make it clear just how important attention to the language of biology will be your mastery of the material.
Some typical, related biological terms that you will encounter in this course:
If you are weak in the language and concepts of biology, you will probably find it to your advantage to generally work through the sections of this course in the order in which they are presented. You may also find it helpful to read parallel sections from a college-level Cell Biology text as you work through the materials in this course. Finally, the notion that Biology comprises a separate culture and language from that of Chemistry has some validity. Students in biochemistry classes seem to make more progress if they use the vocabulary that they are studying. You might find it useful to find a friendly biologist and have regular conversations in which you utilize the vocabulary from this course and explain the material you are learning. If you can't explain these concepts to someone else, you probably don't fully understand them yourself.
