Module: 1
Sponsoring Program: Tetrad
Administrator: Danny Dam

STUDY LIST INFORMATION
Course Number: Biochem 210/BP 219
Course Name: Form, Function, and Force: a deep dive into the cytoskeleton
Units: 3
Grading Option: S/U
Course Director: Roland Dyche Mullins

MORE COURSE INFORMATION
Dates: March 28-April 15
Campus: MB
Room: GH S-202
Schedule: MWF, 10-12
Maximum Class Size: 9-10


Course Description: Life relies on force. Every living cell must generate, resist, and/or transmit physical forces as it organizes its internal spaces and interacts with its external environment. This is the domain of the cytoskeleton, a set of cross linked and entangled polymer networks that generate and channel the forces required for many essential biological processes, including cell division, chromosome segregation, motility, and cell-cell adhesion.

The format of the course will be “choose your own adventure,” where specific interests of the students will determine the direction we take. We can combine reading and classroom discussion with a few days in the lab, getting down and dirty with biological polymers and/or using VR headsets to analyze 3D cell movies. We can read classic papers from the 19th century that laid the foundation for our understanding of the cytoskeleton and hot new preprints that address longstanding mysteries, including: (1) crosstalk between different cytoskeletal networks; (2) the archaea origins of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton; (3) structure and function of the nuclear cytoskeleton; and (4) the mysteries of cortical inheritance (a.k.a. cytoskeletal epigenetics).