Songtao Jia

Jia teaches the first half of Molecular Bio, and it's generally regarded as the crappy half. It's not totally his fault; you spend more time learning about chromatin than anyone should ever have to. But it's mostly his fault, because he's a really dry, hard-to-understand lecturer. He'll often inadequately explain a concept, get a question about it, and then give the same poor explanation. His slides are also remarkably unhelpful, even if you take notes on them. His midterms are a pain - you have to be super specific in your answers or you'll get tons of points off. He asks lots of "design an experiment" questions, and since he always looks for one specific answer it's hard to get these right. Oh, and don't bother trying to argue for points back in office hours, because he won't budge. He curves pretty generously though, so stay a couple of points above average and you'll probably end up with an A-range grade.

Biotechnology techniques and how they work, when to use one over the other, etc

It was a lot more work than I expected for a PhD level survey class. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2021 Course: BIOLGR6007_001_2021_3-TheCentralDogma:MechanismsandRegula : BIOLGR6007_001_2021_3 - The Central Dogma: Mechanisms and Regula Instructor: Marko Jovanovic

j This is for the Molecular Biology Class Review. Songtao taught 1/2 of Molecular Biology while Ron Prywes taught the second half. To be honest, Songtao was an okay teacher, nothing great, but not bad either. He has a VERY SLIGHT accent and tends to speak very softly (kind of similar to Tong for Biochemistry), but he's better at enunciating than Tong but maybe because the Molecular Biology classroom size is much smaller than the Pupin huge lecture hall. Anyway, to be honest, 95% of Songtao says is from the book, which does a better job of condensing everything than his lectures, which can go off in some unnecessary information directions. His exams, along with Prywes, are DESIGN AN EXPERIMENT BASED heavy. Generally 60% of the points are memorization based while the other 40% are design an experiment. Of course people usually get the same grade on the memorization part so it's the design an experiment questions that determine your grade in the end. Here's an example question: something like: You have discovered a polymerase that binds specifically to the college gene. This polymerase is similar to polymerase II but not quite, as there are several different factors required for binding to the DNA/gene. How would you find out what these factors are? How would you check to see whether the polymerase dissociates immediately after transcription ends? Songtao does go through methods…

3 midterms (2 Jia, 1 Manley) and a final (Manley). Midterms are non-cumulative, final is cumulative only for Manley's section.

Part I (Kalderon)- The features and appropriate use of new generation sequencing technologies for the purpose of creating gene-libraries to establish a general reference parameter for use in current or future studies as well as the design of transformative factors for the development of therapeutics/treatments, diagnostics, and or assays. Part II (Jia)- Same as above, except in the context of proteins/proteomics.

You have 5 problem sets....most of them you get 100%, but one of them was pretty difficult with people getting like 70%...in the end the problem sets account for about 1/2 a midterm.....you have 4 midterms, none dropped. 2 for songtao, 2 for prywes

Part I – DNA purification, isolation, and amplification/ cloning techniques. DNA/Oligonucleotide synthesis and sequencing methods. Focus on both old and new technologies. Part II – Protein purification/ isolation techniques, as well as synthesis and sequencing methods. Assays and strategies for identifying/ analyzing protein-protein interactions and structure/functional analysis of protein-DNA interactions. Brief coverage of genome editing technologies/ strategies. Focus on more contemporary technologies – those most commonly used as well as up and coming methods.

I learned a lot of new techniques in biotechnology from this course but also a great deal of the learning I had to do on my own as there were several points in the homework assignments that were not covered in class thoroughly.

Intensive and detailed info about dna related biotechnology