The School of Life · biology, medicine & health
Cell & Molecular Biology
The machinery inside every living thing — how a single cell reads its instructions, builds itself, and keeps going.
How a single cell reads its instructions, powers itself, and divides — the common ground of all life.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~30 hours
Unit I — What Makes a Cell
How the cell theory was established · Prokaryotes and eukaryotes compared · The plasma membrane and what crosses it · Surface area, volume, and why cells stay small
Unit II — The Organelles at Work
The nucleus and the storage of instructions · Ribosomes, ER, and Golgi as a production line · Mitochondria and chloroplasts as power plants · The cytoskeleton and cell shape
Unit III — Energy and the Cell
ATP as the cell's currency · An overview of cellular respiration · Photosynthesis in outline · Enzymes and reaction rates
Unit IV — The Cell Cycle
Interphase and preparation · Mitosis stage by stage · Cytokinesis and division · Checkpoints and controlled cell death
How the sequence written in DNA becomes the working proteins that run a cell.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~28 hours
Unit I — The Molecule of Heredity
The structure of DNA · Base pairing and the double helix · How DNA is packaged into chromosomes · The experiments that proved DNA carries heredity
Unit II — Replication
Semiconservative replication · The replication fork and its enzymes · Leading and lagging strands · Proofreading and error rates
Unit III — Transcription
From gene to messenger RNA · RNA polymerase and promoters · Processing the transcript in eukaryotes · The genetic code
Unit IV — Translation
Ribosomes and transfer RNA · Reading codons into amino acids · Folding and the finished protein · Mutations and their consequences
How cells sense their surroundings and pass messages inward — the logic behind hormones, growth, and cancer.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Principles of Signaling
Signal, receptor, and response · Endocrine, paracrine, and autocrine modes · Ligand-receptor binding and specificity · Signal amplification
Unit II — Receptor Families
G-protein-coupled receptors · Receptor tyrosine kinases · Ion-channel receptors · Intracellular receptors
Unit III — Second Messengers and Cascades
cAMP and protein kinase A · Calcium as a signal · The MAP kinase cascade · Turning signals off
Unit IV — Signaling Gone Wrong
Signaling in cell growth · Oncogenes and tumor suppressors · Signaling in the immune response · Drugs that target pathways
The molecules of life and the reactions that build, break, and store them.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~32 hours
Unit I — The Building Blocks
Water and the properties of life · Carbohydrates and sugars · Lipids and membranes · Amino acids and proteins · Nucleotides
Unit II — Protein Structure and Enzymes
Levels of protein structure · How enzymes lower activation energy · Enzyme kinetics · Regulation and inhibition
Unit III — Metabolism I: Releasing Energy
Glycolysis · The citric acid cycle · Oxidative phosphorylation · The energy ledger
Unit IV — Metabolism II: Building and Storing
Gluconeogenesis and glycogen · Fatty acid synthesis and breakdown · Integration of metabolism · Metabolic disease in outline
How lenses, stains, and light let us look inside cells far too small to see.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~12 hours
Unit I — Light and the Lens
Magnification and resolution · The compound light microscope · Preparing a wet mount · Focusing and depth of field
Unit II — Making the Invisible Visible
Why we stain · Common stains and what they show · Fixation and sectioning · Reading what you see
Unit III — Beyond the Light Microscope
Electron microscopy in outline · Fluorescence and tagging molecules · Live-cell imaging · The limits of each method