Survey of the physical, chemical and biological properties of freshwater ecosystems, both riverine and lentic, natural and polluted. Prerequisite: One semester of college chemistry.

This course will focus on the molecular mechanisms by which fundamental cellular processes are disrupted in the development of cancer.

This course is designed for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students with a particular interest in infectious disease biology. Note that this course is not a comprehensive survey of the field and is not appropriate for students seeking a lecture course on disease. The primary objective of this course is to teach students considering a career in the biomedical sciences how to read, discuss, and question research papers effectively. Intensive classroom discussions focus on the experimental methods used, results obtained, interpretation of these results in the context of pathogen interactions with host cells and organisms, and implications for basic research and therapeutic development. Prerequisite: BIOL 221 recommended.

Early development of microbiology, pathology, and immunobiology; molecular and cellular bases of immune phenomena including: immunity to pathogens, immune diseases, autoimmunity, and hypersensitivity. This course is open to students in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies only.

The importance of microbiology in complex issues, such as the impact of the microbiome in human health or as alternative energy sources, is being appreciated more and more each day. This upper level laboratory course provides students with a robust technical skill set while also giving them an opportunity to participate in an authentic research project that may lead to novel discoveries. Students will generate research questions, formulate hypotheses, design experiments, analyze data, and present their research findings to the class. In each project, students will use the cutting edge approach of metagenomics to evaluate the microbial diversity of their environment via Next Generation Sequencing. Students will also examine the function of microbial species within their communities. Potential projects include the isolation of novel antibiotic producers and the antibiotic they produce, designing and optimizing microbial fuel cells that can be used to generate electricity, or isolating antibiotic resistant bacteria and attempting novel approaches to inhibit or prevent their growth. Prerequisite: BIOL 375 previously or concurrently is recommended but not required.

Microbiology plays a central role in diverse areas of human life such as infectious disease, ecology, and biotechnology. This course will cover aspects of modern microbiology with an emphasis on prokaryotic organisms. The topics will include basic aspects of microbial diversity, genetics, virology, and pathogenesis as well as examples of applied microbiology.

A view of how an animal embryo is specified to develop and differentiate into a wide spectrum of cell types, and how the spatial patterns and axes of embyros are determined. The course will focus on genetic and molecular approaches, but will also cover the comparative anatomy of developing embryos to the extent necessary to understand the conserved aspects of embryonic patterning. Special emphasis will be placed on organisms with particular advantages for the study of embryonic development: e.g., mouse, frog, zebrafish, and Drosophila. The first half of the course will cover cell fate restrictions, cloning animals using nuclear transfer, stem cell biology, formation of the embryonic axes in vertebrates and Drosophila, and patterning of the neural tube and mesodermal tissues. The second half of the course will focus on emerging ideas and findings in the field, with emphasis on analysis of original literature.

A view of how an animal embryo is specified to develop and differentiate into a wide spectrum of cell types, and how the spatial patterns and axes of embyros are determined. The course will focus on genetic and molecular approaches, but will also cover the comparative anatomy of developing embryos to the extent necessary to understand the conserved aspects of embryonic patterning. Special emphasis will be placed on organisms with particular advantages for the study of embryonic development: e.g., mouse, frog, zebrafish, and Drosophila. The first half of the course will cover cell fate restrictions, cloning animals using nuclear transfer, stem cell biology, formation of the embryonic axes in vertebrates and Drosophila, and patterning of the neural tube and mesodermal tissues. The second half of the course will focus on emerging ideas and findings in the field, with emphasis on analysis of original literature.

This course will survey the phylogeny and anatomy of vertebrate organisms from a comparative evolutionary perspective. The lecture will concentrate on the history, diversity, structure and function of vertebrates. A companion lab course, BIOL 336, is available for those students interested in a more complete understanding of vertebrate anatomy.

This course is designed to introduce the undergraduate student to the structure of tissues at the cellular level and to the way in which those tissues are assembled into organs. This knowledge of structure will be the basis for discussion of tissue and organ function. This course is open to students in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies only.