This course focuses on works that caught the popular imagination in the past or present. It emphasizes texts that are related by genre, theme or style. The books studied in this course vary from semester to semester, and the topic for Fall 2006 is Detective Fictions.

This class uses a range of literary texts to trace the growth of the vampire trope from its first appearance in English-language fiction in the early years of the nineteenth century. Centering on classic works by Lord Byron, John Polidori, Sheridan le Fanu, Bram Stoker, and others, we learn about the formation of the modern literary canon, the folklore of the undead, and the creation of one of the most prolific popular culture genres—vampire fiction—which reached its first apotheosis in Stoker’s masterwork, Dracula.

What is a “life” when it’s written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir and between personal and social themes. We will closely examine some recent memoirs: Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Students will write two brief papers: a critical essay and an experiment in memoir.
As a “Sampling,” this class offers 6 units, with a strong emphasis on close reading, group discussion, focused writing, and research and presentation skills.

This course is an introduction to major books from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Particular attention has been given to literary techniques, issues resulting from translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, and the different historical periods that produced and are reflected in the Bible. Investigation of the Bible as influence in later narrative, philosophic, and artistic traditions.

This course explores the physical, ecological, technological, political, economic, and cultural implications of big plans and mega-urban landscapes in a global context. It uses local and international case studies to understand the process of making major changes to urban landscape and city fabric, and to regional landscape systems. It includes lectures by leading practitioners. The assignments consider planning and design strategies across multiple scales and time frames.

This course is offered for graduate students who are interested in the interdisciplinary study of bio-inspired structures. The intent is to introduce students to newly inspired modern advanced structures and their applications. It aims to link traditional advanced composites to bio-inspired structures and to discuss their generic properties. A link between materials design, strength and structural behavior at different levels (material, element, structural and system levels) is made. For each level, various concepts will be introduced. The importance of structural, dynamic, thermodynamic and kinetic theories related to such processing is highlighted. The pedagogy is based on active learning and a balance of guest lectures and hands-on activities.

BioNook is Whitehead Institute’s online biology resource, offering exciting learning enrichment for students, parents and teachers. Find videos, podcasts and stories on Whitehead Institute Science, as well as virtual workshop opportunities through BioNook’s After School Science Club, and ideas for nature-based activities.
Explore free materials on biology and research—from deep explorations of how science is done, to stories following the lives of scientists, to suggestions for fun outside activities and hands-on citizen science projects.

This course focuses on the interaction of chemical engineering, biochemistry, and microbiology. Mathematical representations of microbial systems are featured among lecture topics. Kinetics of growth, death, and metabolism are also covered. Continuous fermentation, agitation, mass transfer, and scale-up in fermentation systems, and enzyme technology round out the subject material.

The course, which spans two thirds of a semester, provides students with a research-inspired laboratory experience that introduces standard biochemical techniques in the context of investigating a current and exciting research topic, acquired resistance to the cancer drug Gleevec. Techniques include protein expression, purification, and gel analysis, PCR, site-directed mutagenesis, kinase activity assays, and protein structure viewing.
This class is part of the new laboratory curriculum in the MIT Department of Chemistry. Undergraduate Research-Inspired Experimental Chemistry Alternatives (URIECA) introduces students to cutting edge research topics in a modular format.
Acknowledgments
Development of this course was funded through an HHMI Professors grant to Professor Catherine L. Drennan.

This course considers the process of neurotransmission, especially chemicals used in the brain and elsewhere to carry signals from nerve terminals to the structures they innervate. We focus on monoamine transmitters (acetylcholine; serotonin; dopamine and norepinephrine); we also examine amino acid and peptide transmitters and neuromodulators like adenosine. Macromolecules that mediate neurotransmitter synthesis, release, inactivation and receptor-mediated actions are discussed, as well as factors that regulate their activity and the second-messenger systems and ion fluxes that they control. The involvement of particular neurotransmitters in human diseases is considered.

Each term, the class selects a new set of professional journal articles on bioengineering topics of current research interest. Some papers are chosen because of particular content, others are selected because they illustrate important points of methodology. Each week, one student leads the discussion, evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and importance of each paper. Subject may be repeated for credit a maximum of four terms. Letter grade given in the last term applies to all accumulated units of 16.459.

This course does not seek to provide answers to ethical questions. Instead, the course hopes to teach students two things. First, how do you recognize ethical or moral problems in science and medicine? When something does not feel right (whether cloning, or failing to clone) — what exactly is the nature of the discomfort? What kind of tensions and conflicts exist within biomedicine? Second, how can you think productively about ethical and moral problems? What processes create them? Why do people disagree about them? How can an understanding of philosophy or history help resolve them? By the end of the course students will hopefully have sophisticated and nuanced ideas about problems in bioethics, even if they do not have comfortable answers.

This course is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in using primary research literature to discuss and learn about current research around sulfur biogeochemistry and astrobiology.

This interdisciplinary course provides a hands-on approach to students in the topics of bioinformatics and proteomics. Lectures and labs cover sequence analysis, microarray expression analysis, Bayesian methods, control theory, scale-free networks, and biotechnology applications. Designed for those with a computational and/or engineering background, it will include current real-world examples, actual implementations, and engineering design issues. Where applicable, engineering issues from signal processing, network theory, machine learning, robotics and other domains will be expounded upon.

This course examines the chemical and physical properties of the cell and its building blocks, with special emphasis on the structures of proteins and principles of catalysis, as well as the chemistry of organic / inorganic cofactors required for chemical transformations within the cell. Topics encompass the basic principles of metabolism and regulation in pathways, including glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, fatty acid synthesis / degradation, pentose phosphate pathway, Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation.

Course Format
This OCW Scholar course, designed for independent study, is closely modeled on the course taught on the MIT campus. The on-campus course has two types of class sessions: Lectures and recitations. The lectures meet three times each week and recitations meet once a week. In recitations, an instructor or Teaching Assistant elaborates on concepts presented in lecture, working through new examples with student participation, and answers questions.
MIT students who take the corresponding residential class typically report an average of 10–15 hours spent each week, including lectures, recitations, readings, homework, and exams. All students are encouraged to supplement the textbooks and readings with their own research.
The Scholar course has three major learning units, called Modules. Each module has been divided into a sequence of lecture sessions that include:

Textbook Readings
Lecture Notes or Storyboards
A video by Professor JoAnne Stubbe or Professor John Essigmann
Problem Sets and solutions

To help guide your learning, each of these problem sets are accompanied by Problem Solving Videos where Dr. Bogdan Fedeles solves one of the problems from the set.

This course is an advanced treatment of biochemical mechanisms that underlie biological processes. Topics include macromolecular machines such as the ribosome, the proteasome, fatty acid synthases as a paradigm for polyketide synthases and non-ribosomal polypeptide synthases, and polymerases. Emphasis will be given to the experimental methods used to unravel how these processes fit into the cellular context as well as the coordinated regulation of these processes.

This course illustrates how knowledge and principles of biology, biochemistry, and engineering are integrated to create new products for societal benefit. It uses a case study format to examine recently developed products of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries: how a product evolves from initial idea, through patents, testing, evaluation, production, and marketing. Emphasizes scientific and engineering principles; the responsibility scientists, engineers, and business executives have for the consequences of their technology; and instruction and practice in written and oral communication.
The topic focus of this class will vary from year to year. This version looks at inflammation underlying many diseases, specifically its role in cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

This course covers sensing and measurement for quantitative molecular/cell/tissue analysis, in terms of genetic, biochemical, and biophysical properties. Methods include light and fluorescence microscopies; electro-mechanical probes such as atomic force microscopy, laser and magnetic traps, and MEMS devices; and the application of statistics, probability and noise analysis to experimental data. Enrollment preference is given to juniors and seniors.

In this course problems from biological engineering are used to develop structured computer programming skills and explore the theory and practice of complex systems design and construction.
The official course Web site can be viewed at: BE.180 Biological Engineering Programming.

The MIT Biology Department supports TAs’ teaching by providing a specialized Teaching Assistant (TA) training program in Biology Pedagogy, for which TAs can earn a training certificate. This program has been developed in response to the feedback of previous TAs, and is designed to actively meet each TA’s needs as they are teaching. It provides practical knowledge that directly relates to their teaching responsibilities each week, and provides them with the opportunity to practice different skills and techniques in a supportive environment.