Biochemistry

The nationally and internationally recognized faculty of the Department of Biochemistry play prominent roles in education, research and service. The department teaches a major medical school course, provides opportunities for medical students to participate in research, and rewards medical student research accomplishments through the Morris A. Cynkin prize. The department attracts and trains excellent M.D./Ph.D. and Ph.D. candidates, serving as a major part of the Sackler School program in biochemistry. It also sponsors cutting edge research presentations by visiting seminar speakers, including the annual Gerhard Schmidt Memorial Lecture. Members of the department serve in major national scientific organizations, editorial boards of major journals, panels of the National Institutes of Health, and biotechnology companies.

The biochemistry course is presented to medical students in the first semester of the first year. Lectures, small group conference sessions and a faculty-developed syllabus guide students through the course material. In lectures, faculty members distill principles of biochemistry from a vast and growing literature, with increasing emphasis on the nature and transmission of genetic information, its expression in the form of proteins, and the functions of those proteins in cell and tissue structure and in catalysis. In presenting metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and nucleotides, the faculty emphasizes mechanisms of regulation and integration of physiological function, and the way in which genetically determined defects in metabolic reactions lead to human diseases. In conferences, students apply these principles to solving clinical case-based problems. Thus, the course will foster the use of biochemical knowledge to interpret clinical problems. The course is coordinated with molecular biology, cell and developmental biology, genetics, nutrition, and immunology courses in the first semester.

Biochemistry Program