Biomolecular Interactions: Health, Disease, and Drug Design

Catalog description

Interactions between the molecules of life-proteins, RNA, DNA, membrane components-underlie all functions necessary for life. This course focuses on how nature controls these interactions, how these interactions can go awry in disease, and how we can learn the rules of these interactions to design drugs to treat disease. Students will review the physical basis of molecular interactions, learn classic and state-of-the-art high-resolution and high-throughput tools used to measure interaction, and survey the experimental and computational strategies to harness these interactions using a case study in rational drug design. Prerequisite: Introductory Biochemistry. Enrollment limited to 20; instructor permission.