Nucleic Acids Structure and Biology

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Nucleic Acids Structure and Biology ????????
Instructor Yi Zhang Rm 6137- College of Life
Sciences [phone] yizhang_at_whu.edu.cn)
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Course description

• English oriented course

• To provide students an environment to read, to
  think and to express themselves in English.
• English papers (?)
• Power point slides in English(?)
• Give seminar in Englsih (?)
• QA in preferred language

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Course description

• 2. literature oriented course To discuss the
  recent remarkable publications related to our
  topics.

Purpose to make our students exposed to the real
science

• Discussion of the current literature helps to
  appreciate
• How scientists think?
• How scientific investigation is conducted?
• How conclusions are drawn?
• How mistakes are made and avoided?

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Course description
3. A participation course

• A paper/class
• All students MUST read the paper, and
  responsible for the QA section.
• One assigned student is responsible the
  presentation
• --- Overview (instructor)
• --- presentation
• --- Q/A discussion

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Course description

• Grading (3 units)

Presence 30 Participation 20 Presentation 50
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Paper organization

• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• -Set a background/platform for us to understand
  the contents of the paper.
• -The importance of the question that the authors
  have tried to address.

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Paper organization

• 2. Background

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Paper organization

• 3. Materials and Methods
• -Has to be detail enough to allow the others to
  repeat your experiments.
• -The resources of your materials
• -Make clear and detail lab-note when you perform
  experiments. Ask your supervisor to buy good
  quality notebook for you.

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Paper organization
4. Results -Describe the phenomena/results that
you obtained (specificity) -Analyze the
results. -The connections between sentences Make
the description no more no less -Results part
usually has subtitles.
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Paper organization

• 5. Discussion
• Underline the contributions of the paper
• Point out the future direction
• Propose models

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Topics
Nucleic Acids Structure-DNA
AT CG
Stable, double-helical structure
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Base pairing hydrogen bonds
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4
3
3
1
1
2
6
6
1
1
9
9
2
.
AT
GC
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Stable structure base stacking
Hydrophobic interaction Van der Waals forces
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Topics
Nucleic Acids Structure-RNA
AU CG UG
flexible, Single-stranded
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tRNA secondary structure
Base pairing (structure) Base stacking
(stability) cations
D loop
T loop
Anticodon loop
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tRNA tertiary structure
Base pairing (structure) LONG-RANGE Base
stacking (stability) cations
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Topics
HOW Nucleic Acids Structure Determines/relates
to Their function
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• Genome sequence and structure
• Post-genomic era-genome decoding Bioinformatics

DNA

• Genetic elements
• RNA viruses, HIV
• RNA contribution in genome stability and
  composition (RNAi)
• RNA function in RNA processing (ribozymes, RNAi)
• RNA stability
• RNA function in protein synthesis (ribosome and
  antibiotics, miRNA)

Transcription
RNA
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Lecture 1Introduction Lecture 2 Genome Lecture
3 Genome decoding (Bioinformatics)---10/9 Lecture
4 RNA as genetic elements HIV---10/16 Lecture
5 RNA as genetic elements SARS--- 10/23 Lecture
6 RNAi discovery and review ---10/30 (Nobel
prize paper and a review) (2 students) Lecture 7
RNAi function in  genome stability and
composition---11/06 Lecture 8 RNAi and RNA
degradation---11/13 Lecture 9 RNAi and
translational repression---11/20 Lecture 10
miRNA as cancer biomarker---11/27 Lecture 11
miRNA in cancergenesis---12/4 Lecture
12 Ribozyme discovery and review---12/11 (Nobel
prize paper and a review) (I will talk about the
discovery paper, and one student could give a
review. ) Lecture 13 Ribozyme structure and RNA
processing viral RNA maturation---12/18 Lecture
14 Ribozyme structure and RNA processing
Intron-splicing---12/25 Lecture 15 Ribosome
structure and protein synthesis---1/8 Lecture 16
Ribosome structure and the mechanisms of
antibiotics---1/15