Intro to Cell and Molecular Biology (Bio II)

Syllabus Spring 2006

Life at a cell and molecular level. In this course you will be identifying the processes driving life at a molecular and cellular level. How cells harness energy, interact with the environment, and reproduce themselves. This course has a very specific goal: to prepare ESSP students who wish to qualify for the single-subject credential in biology or who wish to enter graduate school in biology. Despite this limited focus you will find that this course will expose you to a great deal of material at a relatively high level of difficulty. Furthermore, much of this material is very recent knowledge as current progress in cell and molecular biology is breath-taking.

Unlike most other ESSP courses that are designed to be interdisciplinary and focused on environmental problem-solving, this course is focused on meeting the external criteria developed by the California State Legislature through the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC).

Please refer to the CTC Biological Science Requirements for Subject Matter Knowledge and Competence for a list of the subset of those biology outcomes that ESSP 241 prepares you to meet. If you need to print out this syllabus to document the course content, please be sure to also print out that linked web page. It is an important part of the syllabus.

The course text, "Biological Science," 2nd edition, by Freeman, is also used to support BIO 240, Bio I. The required reading is outlined in this Schedule of Studies for BIO 241.