Goodies

Gale Rhodes
Department of Chemistry
University of Southern Maine
Portland, Maine 04104-9300

These pages are under construction. I will revise and add to them as my fall-semester course proceeds.

Please send me your comments, suggestions, and corrections.

Introduction

Here is a catch-all of illustrations, handouts, class problems, and demonstration outlines from my biochemistry class.

• STUDENTS: Come here to look again at class illustrations, or to replace lost handouts.
• TEACHERS: Please download and use anything that looks useful. Please request permission to use these resources in your teaching. Here's why.
• Goodies marked OPG are links to Other People's Goodies that I use in my course, and recommend highly.

List of Goodies, By Course Topic

Course Introduction

Cells

Water and Biomolecules

• DEMONSTRATION: Thermodynamics of Rubber-Band Contraction
• Get To Know Histidine, a versatile, important, but often confusing, amino acid.

Protein Sequence

• A Protein Sequencing Problem For Classroom Discussion

Protein Structure

• Polypeptide Charge Calculator/pI Finder -- Charge Of Any Polypeptide At Any pH (Excel File).
• Learn to View Stereo Pairs
• Hill Plots for Myoglobin and Hemoglobin
• OPG How To Grow Protein Crystals
• OPG Pictures of Protein Crystals
• OPG Fourier Transforms -- Relationship Between Diffraction Pattern and Molecular Structure.
• Strengths and Limitations of Crystallographic Models
• RasMol Users, YOU'VE BEEN WONDERING: How to Make RasMol Scripts Portable.

Protein Function

• Supplemental Problems: Oxygen Transport
• The Fe(II) in Globins: D-Obitals in Octahedral Complexes

Enzyme Kinetics & Mechanism

• Clear, Step-By-Step Derivation of the Michaelis-Menten Equation
• Summary of Inhibition Types and Their Kinetic Effects
• An Enzyme Kinetics Problem for Classroom Discussion

Lipids & Membranes

Bioenergetics & Metabolism

• Concentration and Activity (Plugging the Right Numbers Into Energy Calculations)

Monosaccharide Catabolism

Citric-Acid Cycle

Oxidative Phosphorylation

• Summary of DG calculations for Redox Reactions and Proton Gradients

Fatty-Acid & Amino-Acid Catabolism

Biosynthesis (Including Photosynthesis)

Metabolism in Mammals

DNA & Replication

• DEMONSTRATION: Using Rubber Tubing to Demonstrate DNA Supercoiling and the Action of Topoisomerases (Article from The Chemical Educator)

RNA & Transcription

Translation: Protein Synthesis

Regulation of Gene Expression

Recombinant DNA Technology

Bioinformatics

• Tutorial: Bioinformatics for Beginners

Back to Biochemistry Resources

HOME