[bioundgrd] NEW Biology IAP course - Chemistry and Biology of Antibiotics

[Janice Chang]

New Biology IAP course for credit or non-credit!
Open to undergraduate, graduate students, and postdocs

CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY OF ANTIBIOTICS
Instructor: Prof. Jason K. Sello, Ph.D.

Course meeting days: There will be 12 class sessions scheduled on
January 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30

Time:  3:30-5pm

Location:  Building 68-180, except on January 6th, class will be held in 68-121

Course units:  3 unit course:  1-0-2

Registration:
Register for 7.931 Special Subject in Biology for Graduate Students
Pre-register for IAP subjects by Friday, January 3, 2014 by 5pm.
After January 3rd, course can be added by submitting an add/drop/change form.

Course can be taken for credit or non-credit.  Auditors are welcome.

Course description:
An antibiotic is defined as a small molecule produced by a microorganism that kills or compromises the growth of another microorganism. These molecules are likely to be used for chemical defense in Nature, but they have long been exploited in biological research, biotechnology, and medicine. In this course, we will address the following questions:
 Which microorganisms produce antibiotics?
How are antibiotics discovered and structurally characterized?
How do the major structural classes of antibiotics work?
What are the bases of antibiotic resistance?
How are the major structural classes of antibiotics biosynthesized?
How is antibiotic biosynthesis integrated into microbial physiology?
How are the major structural classes of antibiotics made by man?
How are antibiotics used in Nature, the laboratory, and the clinic?
This course is designed to highlight the connections between chemistry and biology. A wide array of topics at the interface of chemistry and biology will be covered. It is open to students with backgrounds in the biological and/or the physical sciences. It is expected that students with strong backgrounds in chemistry will learn fundamental concepts in biology; those with a strong knowledge in biology will learn fundamental concepts in chemistry. Some familiarity with basic concepts of organic chemistry, biochemistry, and genetics will be assumed.

Course activities:
This course includes lectures, in-class discussions, and problem sets.

Instructor:  Prof. Jason K. Sello is currently the M. L. K., Jr. Visiting Associate Professor of Biology at MIT and an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Brown University. Prior to his appointment at Brown, Prof. Sello was a visiting scientist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England and a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School with Prof. Christopher T. Walsh. He earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University in 2002 under the supervision of Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber and a B.S. in biology from Morehouse College in 1997. In his independent career, Prof. Sello has been synergistically using experimental methods from chemistry, molecular biology, biochemistry, and genomics to develop new anti-infectives and biotechnology platforms for the conversion of plant biomass to biofuels and commodity chemicals. At MIT, he is working collaboratively with Prof. Robert T. Sauer in the Department of Biology on antibacterial agents that act by critically perturbing protein turnover in bacteria.

Contact info:  Prof. Jason Sello - jsello at mit.edu<mailto:jsello at mit.edu>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/bioundgrd/attachments/20131217/dd981c8e/attachment.htm