About the course: Students analyze biological formations, such as the structures of the protein aggregates that cause Alzheimer’s disease, and develop plans for designing drugs to treat or detect disease.

Students learn:

• Strategies for searching, reading and interpreting primary literature from scientific articles.
• To evaluate the main methods used to determine structures of drug targets — usually proteins — including X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryogenic electron microscopy. They learn about how these methods work and how to assess which method is best for a given drug-design project.
• How to visualize, analyze and represent protein structures using computer software.

Instructor: Mikaela Stewart, assistant professor of biology

Class times: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-5:10 p.m.

Class size: 10 juniors and seniors who have completed BIOL 40513 (Fundamentals of Biochemistry) or BIOL/CHEM 50133 (Biochemistry I)

Texts: Scientific articles from Nature, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Biochemistry and Nature Chemical Biology

Classwork: Reading and homework assignments are designed to prepare students for lab or in-class activities and discussions. A class participation score is worth 5 percent of the final grade.

A drug-design project requires students to pick a protein that could be targeted by a drug to treat an illness of their choosing. Students design a drug that binds to and activates or inactivates their protein of interest.

A midterm and a final consist of short-answer and essay prompts with a few multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions.