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All of you have taken Biology 150, Introduction to Biological
Inquiry. Each section emphasized skills important to all scientists: reading the
literature, defining a good question, designing a good experiment, learning the tools to
carry out that experiment, analyzing and presenting data, and writing scientific
papers. The next course in our curriculum is Biology 251, in which you will apply
these skills to a broader range of topics. This course will differ from BIO 150 in at
least three important ways. First, it is a 200-level course, so you can expect it to be
more demanding. Second, it has prerequisites of BIO 150 and CHM 129, and a
co-requisite of CHM 221, so we expect you to draw on that information in this
course. Finally, BIO 251 has a different mix of content and process. You will be
asked to learn a good deal of content, much of it from a careful reading of the text.
We will build on what you have learned in Bio 150 about reading papers, designing
experiments, and interpreting data by spending most of lecture time on understanding
how this biological knowledge was obtained. That is, the process of scientific
discovery will continue being emphasized.
BIO 251 focuses primarily on cell and molecular biology. You will learn about many
classic experiments that helped us understand a variety of topics such as how DNA
is replicated, how proteins are made, and the functions of proteins in cells. We want
you to keep in mind that these molecular and cellular processes are occurring in
organisms. Most of the time, the processes are similar in organisms that appear to
be very different, and by examining these same processes in both Bio 251 and Bio
252, you'll understand how fundamental they are to solving challenges all organisms
face.
Finally, BIO 251 serves a variety of student audiences. For some of you, this will be
your last biology course, so this is your opportunity to learn some important cell and
molecular biology. Others of you will continue on to Biology 252, Organisms, Evolution,
and Ecology. There will be several connections between BIO 251 and 252. The most
obvious is the word "organisms" in the titles of both courses, and many of the same
organisms will be used in 251 and 252 laboratory projects. You will also use some
data collected in 251 later in 252 to provide the cellular and molecular basis for
understanding how organisms change over time and how organisms interact with
one another and with the environment. Others of you will go on to take BCM 262,
Introduction to Biological Chemistry. Many of the topics discussed in the biological
chemistry course (e.g. membranes, enzymes, signal transduction) are first
presented in Bio 251. Regardless of the path you take, the skills and content you
master in BIO 251 will be worthwhile.
Not only are students in BIO 251 taking different paths after the course, but you have
taken different sections of BIO 150 to get to this point. We see this as a strength
because biology is a highly collaborative discipline. By now all of you have read
many scientific papers and almost all of them have multiple authors. We ask our
students to collaborate in our courses, just as professional biologists do, because it
often leads to new insights and new perspectives. Each of you will bring different
skills from BIO 150 to BIO 251 and our hope is that you will learn from one another, in
addition to learning from your professors and your texts.
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