Cell and Molecular Biology

Learning outcomes

What learners can expect

1. Explain how water, noncovalent forces, proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates create cellular molecular structure and function.
2. Relate cell size, compartmentation, trafficking, and cytoskeletal organization to transport and mechanical constraints.
3. Quantify diffusion, osmosis, passive transport, electrochemical gradients, and active transport.
4. Use free-energy accounting, enzyme kinetics, respiration, and chemiosmosis to explain cellular energy conversion.
5. Reason from DNA replication through transcription, translation, targeting, and molecular fidelity.
6. Predict gene-expression and signalling responses from regulatory, phosphorylation, feedback, and second-messenger networks.
7. Track cell-cycle control, mitosis, meiosis, chromosome/chromatid state, and genomic-stability mechanisms.
8. Design controls and perturbations, interpret molecular assays, and distinguish correlation from mechanistic evidence.