Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular BiomedicineWorkload: Contact Hours: 99 hours: 6 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour practicals/CAL per fortnight and 9 x 1 hour tutorials. Total Time Commitment: 340 hours (including non-contact time).
Note: There are four CALs - the biochemistry, cell biology and pathology CALs can be done at university while the genetics CAL is completed at home. Microbiology/immunology involves two 90 minute practical classes held roughly at the same time as your scheduled CAL timeslot (so putting them in other places in your personal timetable won't change anything). The "tutorials" are workshops; essentially lecture slots that the lecturer uses to summarise concepts, expose the cohort to practice questions or extend upon the concepts covered in lectures.
Assessment: 5 x continuous assessment exercises during semester - 10% (2% each); 2 x intra-semester tests during semester - 20% (10% each); 2 x 2 hour examinations during the exam period - 70% (35% each).
The continuous assessment exercises refer to the LMS test that becomes available once the whole cohort has completed the CALs/practicals.
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: The 2013 mid-semester tests were made available to us as revision during the semester. For the final exams, we were supplied with 2010, 2011 and 2013. This might vary from year to year, but 2010 can be found on the university library website. Note that the format of these exams is very different from the current exam format.
Textbook Recommendation: Prescribed textbook: Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", 5th Edition
Recommended textbooks:
- Nelson D, Cox M, "Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry", 6th edition
- Griffiths AJF et al., "Introduction to Genetic Analysis", 10th edition
- Engleberg NC et al., “Schaechter's Mechanisms of Microbial Disease” 4th edition
- Kumar V et al., 'Robbins Basic Pathology', 8th edition
It might be worth having your hands on a version of the prescribed textbook, although all the lecturers emphasise that only content covered in the lectures is examinable. Hence, I didn't use the textbook that much this year. As to all the recommended textbooks - I didn't even look at them once. However, they're not too difficult to "find" (*cough*) so it might be good to have them there anyway.
Note also that the 6th edition of the prescribed textbook is now available. It doesn't matter which version you have out of these two, the lecturers tried their best to provided references for both.
Lecturer(s): Dr Terry Mulhern: Lectures 1-17 - Biochemistry
Dr Michael Murray: Lectures 18-22, 27-29 - Genetics
Dr Marnie Blewitt: Lectures 23-24 - Epigenetics
Dr Trent Perry: Lectures 25-26 - Genetics in development
Assoc Prof Robb de Iongh: Lectures 30-35, 38-42 - Cell biology
Assoc Prof Gary Hime: Lectures 36-38 - Cell junctions and the extracellular matrix
Prof Roy Robins-Browne: Lectures 43-48 - Bacteriology
Prof Lorena Brown: Lectures 49-51 - Virology
Dr Odilia Wijburg: Lectures 52-57 - Immunology
Dr Vicki Lawson: Lectures 58-66 - Pathology
Dr Tom Karaggianis: Lectures 67-68 - Neoplasia
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2015
Rating: 4/5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: As all the other reviews do for this subject, I'll have to start with the inevitable truth - this subject is a very difficult one. This was something I really didn't want to believe or face, but no matter how I tried to see it BIOM20001 made sure I got a good slap in the face about it anyway. I guess the part I find difficult to come to terms with is the fact that I was managing the first six weeks of this subject just fine. I wasn't having any trouble. I wasn't feeling exceptionally overwhelmed by the workload. I had been lulled into a false sense of security, believing that maybe the cohorts gone before us were just exaggerating how difficult it would be, or that it was merely a matter of actually doing your work (first year can allow you to be a bit slack at times). Then week 7 happened, and I never quite got back on my feet again. This subject is a lot of work, although it can definitely be completed without having to drop your study load. That being said, I totally understand why so many people do it now. Yes, you can complete this subject having two others on the side, but you might struggle to really balance yourself. I know that this eventually became a problem for me, although all this might be more a reflection on me than on the subject itself. All I can say is to brace yourselves and be prepared for the upcoming challenge. Compared to first year, I also found myself having to actively memorise a lot more content. I'll also re-iterate, however, that the concepts covered in this subject are not particularly difficult - the challenge merely presents itself through all the content you need to know.
All of that said, this subject is a great opportunity to get a taste of the various majors on offer in third year. There will be sections you love and others you hate, but at least you can actually make an informed decision on what you want to do. This is a luxury Science students miss out on - generally they are forced to have to eliminate options coming straight out of first year, whereas you can systematically work through each one and potentially decide through a process of elimination (which is essentially what I'm doing). So in that sense, I'm grateful for this opportunity. Regardless of how you feel for each individual topic, you'll find that the quality of the teaching staff is generally quite high, which makes this subject more bearable.
In terms of the format, you'll generally have six lectures and a workshop, or seven lectures per week. As I said above, the workshops are essentially lecture slots that the lecturer uses to summarise concepts, expose the cohort to practice questions or extend upon the concepts covered in lectures. Importantly, they're not like the workshops in first year biology, and they're not a waste of time. You should definitely make sure you go over these classes and treat them seriously. Personally, I found the workshops very helpful in clarifying my understanding of the various topics. The lectures are essentially as they are in other subjects. You'll have one every day, and on some days, two, so it is absolutely imperative that you get in the habit of summarising lectures the day that they're conducted. If you wait until the end of the week, you can see yourself falling up to seven lectures behind, which is not an ideal circumstance to be in at all. This subject is sequential and moves fast, and if you haven't properly consolidated the content covered in the previous one, it can be difficult to understand subsequent ones and it can all quickly snowball into one huge problem. This can make things particularly hard at times because students are left very little time to sit with more difficult concepts and understand them before moving on, so I can only hope this may be addressed in some way in the future (perhaps having two lectures on Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be better for that reason, I'm not sure). It is one of the reasons I have not awarded this subject 5/5.
In addition, you'll have a CAL (which stands for computer-assisted learning class) roughly every fortnight, and, towards the end of the semester, two practicals for microbiology in place of a CAL. Given that the genetics CAL is completed at home you essentially only have three of these CAL classes. In these classes you go through a website or program in the computer lab and fill out a worksheet. This is all done individually and at your own pace - if you run out of time the CAL was generally available to do at home afterwards, so it's not a big problem (I only ever finished one CAL on time -.-). In fact, the biochemistry and cell biology CALs could pretty much be completed at home if you really wanted to do that, but the advantage in going in is that staff are available to answer questions you may have. Once all the CAL class groups have had their CAL class, a test on the CAL content becomes available on the LMS. This is generally just a 10 mark multiple choice quiz with a one hour time limit, although this can vary from case to case. I was in the first CAL group which generally meant that the test became available two weeks after I did the CAL, so I was forced to revisit the content before the assessment. If you can, try to get into a later CAL class so you don't have to do this. In general, I did not find the CALs useful, relevant or interesting, and is another reason I am not giving this subject a 5/5. In terms of assessment though, it wasn't too difficult to get most of the 2% for each one, and in a subject like this one, I guess people are happy to do whatever in order to get some extra marks.
From here forth, I'll go through this review analysing each section of the course separately, but be aware the concepts are never really kept in isolation but integrated together. This is important to bear in mind when it comes to assessment. During the semester, make an effort to be aware of the links, and make a mental note of them in the back of your mind. From time to time lecturers would actually pull slides from another part of the course to demonstrate the link, so it's evident a lot of time and effort has been made for integration.
Weeks 1-3: BiochemistryYour first set of lectures will cover the key concepts of biochemistry and molecular biology, which are taken by Terry Mulhern. The good news is that this is taught significantly better than first year chemistry, and I found it much easier to understand. Personally speaking, it's still not one of my favourite topics to learn about, but at least I was left with a much more positive taste in my mouth compared to first year chemistry. Terry's also a very good and thorough lecturer, although he had the tendency to speak a bit fast at times. I found the content was presented in a manner that was appropriate and for the most part not too difficult to follow. This part of the course covers all the biomacromolecule structures and functions (with a stronger focus on proteins), as well as key reactions of metabolism (glycolysis, Krebs cycle, anaerobic respiration, fermentation, and the electron transport chain) and how these are regulated. Yes, you will need to know all the details of these reactions. As you can probably see, you will need to commit to memory a lot of information. I'm sure you've already heard that you'll need to know the amino acids, including their three letter and single letter codes. I would strongly suggest getting onto this sooner rather than later. Given that I was aware of this before starting this subject, I worked on learning these over the summer holidays so that I already knew them prior to the semester starting. In the end, this proved to be a massive help. I used a flashcard app on my phone to learn them and worked through it from time to time and found that a very effective way to learn them. Metabolism all gets covered in week 3 essentially and it can be challenging to have to try and become familiar with a metabolic pathway in time for the next lecture so that everything made sense. That being said, I found that it wasn't as daunting as I initially thought. The most difficult part of this section is the regulation part, but with time and persistence I found this eventually clicked. Biochemistry is a bit of an odd one, because while you have to spend a lot of time actively memorising content, once it's memorised, it's very easy to understand, and your understanding will hold your memory intact. For example, once you know about the structures of the amino acids, their properties are easy to understand and recognise. Similarly, the metabolic pathways and their regulation actually make a lot of sense. It's essentially the reverse to how it works most of the time, where understanding facilitates remembering.
Terry mainly used his workshops to clear up any confusion about the questions he would pose at the end of these lectures, or would expose us to practice multiple choice questions which we would answer on quickpoll. This turned out to be very helpful for the assessments, so I would make every effort to attempt questions and go to (or watch) the workshops.
The CAL for this part of the course involved reading an experimental procedure and answering questions. The content doesn't really tie in with the course that well and beyond the CAL test the content never really came up again. Technically all CAL, practical and workshop content is examinable but not in this case.
I'll just put a note at the end that GAMSAT pretty much co-incides with metabolism, which can make this excruciatingly difficult if you're in this boat. To be honest, I don't know if I could've coped if I also had the GAMSAT to contend with. Anyway, bear this in mind, and go in with a game plan.
Weeks 4-6: GeneticsAhh, genetics... my safe haven. For me genetics is not the most interesting aspect of biology, but it comes to me easy, and the whole discipline really is about understanding the concepts in favour of knowing all the little details. Michael Murray takes the bulk of the lectures in this block and he will emphasise to you that actually understanding what is presented to you in lectures is far more important than knowing some random tiny detail that would otherwise be fair game in pretty much any other section of the course. For this reason, I really liked this part of the course as it was a nice change from the rest of what the course seems to focus on. The lectures predominantly focus on gene expression and cancer, although some time is also dedicated to advances made in genetics research. Again, the content was presented in a clear and appropriate manner. In addition, Marnie Blewitt takes two lectures on epigenetics and Trent Perry takes two lectures on genetics in development. I personally love epigenetics so I found those lectures very interesting. Marnie has the tendency to speak quite fast but she was very professional - if you need to definitely rewatch her lectures again. However, at the time I found Trent's lecture content a bit confusing. In the end though, it's not terribly complicated and with a bit of persistence you will get it. Given that it's only a couple of lectures it never makes up a large portion of the assessment anyway.
All the lecturers provide practice questions at the end of their lectures, which are generally gone over at the start of the next lecture (if applicable) but may be addressed in workshops if they caused particular problems. However, I found the workshops slightly less useful for this section. Unlike in other sections, the lecturers relied on students suggesting concepts to re-cover. In theory this should work but most students didn't seem to have that many problems so the classes sort of went to waste.
The CAL for this section ties into the course slightly better compared to biochemistry, although it was still a bit detached. It involved using a program to deduce a particular genetic outcome. At least you do this one at home. In terms of further assessment, the content never really came up again either.
Weeks 6-8: Cell biologyThe next part of the course is cell biology, taken by Robb de Iongh, with cell junctions and extracellular matrix covered by Gary Hime. Pretty much everything in the course can be linked to the concepts covered in this section, which makes sense given the title of the subject and the fact that the lecturer for this section is also the subject's co-ordinator. At the end of first year I thought this would be the section that I'd end up pursuing further but in the end I actually found cell biology the least enjoyable part. It probably had more to do with the rote-learning and the way you have to think to learn the information than anything else. Nonetheless, I personally found this section difficult - understandably things went a bit downhill for me here. You'll learn a lot about cell processes, structures and signalling pathways which I don't think I appreciated in the end because of the fast, demanding pace of the lectures. Robb and Gary like to merely put diagrams of the processes, and given how I was feeling at the time I decided I'd cut and paste them into my book. If there was one mistake I had made in this subject, it was this. There is a reason why they choose to present the content in this way - it's the easiest way to convey the information, and the diagrams are pretty much self-explanatory. Additionally, knowing the diagrams proves very helpful in the assessment. If I had taken the time to actually draw out all the diagrams, I would have understood all the content very quickly. In the end, my shortcut pretty much backfired and I spent most of my time needlessly confused. That being said, I think some areas were still confusing to me in general so I think this also just highlighted a weak point.
Robb uses the workshop in this section to explore cancer in greater depth, even though you learn about it heaps in lectures. However, he makes the effort to integrate his own concepts as well as the concepts of others, and this is extremely handy for the assessment. You're asked to read a scientific article on cancer prior to attending, although only a handful seemed to do it. You could probably get away with not reading it, but if you have the time, why not have a read of it anyway?
A positive is that the CAL pretty much ties in perfectly with the lectures. While it merely involves reading a website and filling in a worksheet, it's probably a good way to further consolidate your knowledge in another learning format. I'd suggest that this CAL would be good for exam revision too, given its relevance to the course.
Weeks 8-10: Infection and immunityThis part of the course is spread fairly evenly between bacteriology, taken by Roy Robins-Browne, virology, taken by Lorena Brown, and immunology, taken by Odilia Wijburg. Roy's section is first up, and you'll spend time learning about bacterial structure and virulence, as well as mechanisms to combat bacterial infection. As other reviews have warned, Roy likes to tell a lot of stories, which can make their way into examinable content, so don't just sit there thinking that they're irrelevant (which, in all fairness, is easy to do because they don't come across as particularly important) but make every effort to jot down the key message of each one, as well as any additional bacterial species he happens to mention. While we still received a number of these stories this year, thankfully feedback from previous cohorts had been heard and Roy showed a lot of restraint when it came to the assessment - none of his stories or extra bacteria actually came up anywhere. However, there's never any guarantee, so don't take the chance. We then moved onto having just three lectures on virus structure/virulence and antiviral mechanisms with Lorena. Lorena's officially my favourite lecturer now. She was so nice and also an amazing lecturer. She doesn't quite go into the same level of specifics as Roy, but it's important to take note of the key examples. The microbiology lectures are then followed up by a week of immunology lectures with Odilia. Odilia's slides are amongst the best I've seen at university - they are incredibly well laid out and pretty much contain all the information that you need. Hence, it might seem like she's reading off the slides, but it's so much easier to compile all the information compared to other lecturers who seem to mention a lot of important stuff that's not written down (and hence easy to miss). I guess it's evident the microbiology and immunology department is very thorough in their teaching, backing up the positive words I hear from others taking MIIM subjects. Anyway, Odilia does contain a few so-called "slides of death" which you'll need to commit to memory as well - if you haven't gotten the picture by now, you'll probably come to see that learning the amino acids will become the least of your problems in this subject compared to the content you need to memorise in all the other sections.
I also liked Odilia's workshop for this section, where we went through practice multiple choice questions together.
Instead of a CAL you actually have two practical classes for microbiology in the Peter Doherty institute. Given that there are no other practicals in this subject, and that most of the other subjects students tend to take alongside this subject don't have practicals either, it was quite a nice change to be back in the laboratory again. In these classes you go through a real case study to try and figure out the cause of an infection. Relax - they're nothing like first year: you won't be traumatised by having to do a tonne of stuff in a short period of time or face poor marks. The sessions are not jam-packed as they are in first year, and at the end of each session the demonstrator takes the time to go through all the answers on the worksheet. Additionally, there's no in-practical assessment either - the assessment is the same as it is for the other CALs. For your benefit, the department also puts up some practice questions for you to do, which was really nice of them. Hence, I found that I was actually able to appreciate what was going on for once. It may be a good idea to be familiar with the bacteria you come across in these classes only because Roy might wish to exploit them in assessment.
As you can see, I enjoyed this section for a number of reasons. The teaching standard was exceptionally high, and the content was appropriately balanced between memory and understanding. Additionally, while there was a lot to memorise there weren't any pathways to remember, which, for me, was a plus.
Weeks 11-12: PathologyThe last section of this course is pathology, taken by Vicki Lawson. Given that there's only 11 lectures dedicated to this section, some felt this part of the course came across as rushed and disjointed, and many found it to be the most difficult area to learn. Contrastingly, I think this proved to be my favourite part of the course. Vicki does tend to talk quite fast so reviewing the lectures again might be necessary, but she makes the effort to emphasise the need to sit down and think about how the concepts relate to one another, and I really liked her as a lecturer anyway. I also personally found the content just seemed to click and make a lot of sense. Perhaps part of the reason why I enjoyed this section so much was because the link to medicine is, for once, extremely explicit. That being said, it probably wasn't my strongest area either (weird, I know). Here you'll spend a lot of time on immunopathology (i.e. injury, inflammation, would healing and hypersensitivity), so there's a nice link to Odilia's content. The final two lectures of this subject are taken by Tom Karaggianis, who formalises a lot of the concepts you've already learnt about neoplasia (cancer). Pretty much nothing covered in his lectures was new, but again the reinforcement proves helpful for the assessment. Vicki's workshop was run in a similar fashion to Odilia's.
The CAL for this section also ties in with lecture content quite well as it's essentially a summary of Vicki's lectures. However, as it is not a website but rather a program, you must complete this CAL at the computer lab. Don't make the mistake that many made and not turn up, and then have to try and find another time when the computer lab was free, and find the program on the computer, to work through the worksheet.
AssessmentGiven the relatively high failure rates of previous years, the staff have made an effort to try and simplify the assessment and make it more manageable, and this showed in this year's assessment.
In addition to CAL tests, your other mid-semester assessments are two mid-semester tests, held in weeks 6 and 11. Both tests contain 30 multiple choice questions to be completed in 30 minutes. These are generally not hard if you've made the effort to do the work properly and review the content. Many of the questions require you to recall information, but I felt enough questions also required a more solid understanding of the concepts taught. Some sections managed to do this particularly well - off the top of my head I'd say biochemistry and immunology tended to do this quite effectively. Most people know that this subject is difficult, so many (including myself) invested more time studying for these this year compared to first year biology. This showed in my results - I did significantly better in my tests this year, despite the extra difficulty of this subject. Test 1 covers biochemistry and genetics, and test 2 covers cell biology and infection and immunity. Generally, cohorts tend to do better in test 1 compared to test 2; this probably has to do with the fact that you generally get the mid-semester break to study properly for test 1, which is not a luxury you get for test 2. However, for some weird reason, our cohort did much better on test 2. I personally got the same result for both tests and found them both similar in difficulty (although I felt less prepared for test 2). For each test you'll get a review lecture where you actually receive (collective) feedback on how the test was conducted, and questions answered correctly by less than 50% of the cohort are gone over again. I really appreciated the effort that was put into these review classes.
Your very last lecture covers exam information and is worth paying attention to. No doubt you're aware that BIOM20001 has two exams - exam A, which consists of 80 multiple choice questions and 40 marks of fill in the blank questions; and exam B, which consists of integrated short answer questions. In the last lecture you will be told which topics are to be integrated for which questions in exam B. This is where that mental list you've been compiling over the course of the semester comes in handy. During SWOTVAC, it's a really good idea to sit down and make a list of all the concepts that could possibly be integrated, and for larger concepts (e.g. cancer) you may wish to write some summary notes that actually tie in all the information from the whole course. You should be able to predict what sorts of concepts will come up in your exam B.
Exam A was never really a concern for me given that it was multiple choice and fill in the blank, but previous cohorts had reported that it was difficult to complete on time. This wasn't the case this year. Most found this exam comparable to the difficulty and style of the mid-semester tests and was therefore considered manageable. Since pathology is not covered in a mid-semester test, there are more pathology questions in the multiple choice section, but these were fairly similar in style to the questions Vicki asked in her CAL.
Exam B is the exam that scares most people. It's your first ever short answer exam for biology at university, and it seems like an absolute nightmare given all the detail you're expected to know. However, in the end it wasn't actually that bad. The practice exams that you'll receive mainly consist of long answer questions rather than short answer questions, and so while they are worth doing for practice, they are not representative of what the actual exam is like. In terms of structure (as well as the focus of questions), exam B is much like the short answer section of the VCE Biology exam. The sections are integrated in the sense that they all relate to a particular concept, but generally each individual question only really required knowledge from one part of the course. Note that you will be expected to draw diagrams for many of the questions - so make the effort to learn them! They don't have to be perfect but try to ensure they are somewhat representative of the concept if you can. The focus of the exam is also not what you'd expect - it's not so much splurging down all the details you can think of for a particular concept; rather it's about finding connections between concepts and being able to make inferences and apply knowledge to various observations. Hence, I really enjoyed this exam, because if you actually deeply understood all the concepts, you were sweet. That being said, it's also difficult to know how you went because none of the answers were really explicit either. In previous years it also seemed many people failed to finish, but this year I think most people managed to get everything done just in time. I personally finished with a handful of minutes remaining. Definitely work at a brisk pace.
tl;drThis subject is conducted at a very high standard, although that doesn't mean it doesn't have its drawbacks. It's not very difficult concept-wise, but with such a high workload it can often seem overwhelming and get the better of you. When picking other subjects, I implore you to choose wisely, because this subject requires a large time investment - easily two subject's worth, if not more. Not that this is a standardised unit of measurement, but to indicate to you the size of this course, I used up eight exercise books for this subject, compared to three in subjects with a normal load (so you can sort of see this subject is actually more than the workload of two normal subjects, if you get what I mean). If you can find a way to make things work though, you'll find that you'll be absolutely fine, because the staff go to great lengths to try and make the journey as smooth as it can possibly be for you. Be prepared for the challenge, and embrace it - ultimately this subject is tough but as everyone says it's worth it in the end. Other than that, I think that's all I've got to say. Good luck!