97313 - ELEMENTI DI FISIOLOGIA CELLULARE ED INTRODUZIONE ALLE ATTIVITA' DI LABORATORIO

Learning outcomes

The course is aimed at providing students with the required knowledge of basic cell function and with theoretical/practical skills to work in a biotechnology Lab.

Course contents

The course is aimed at providing students with the required knowledge of basic cell function and with teoric/practical skills to work in a biotechnology lab understanding the consequences of each activity in terms of reproducibility of the experimental results.The course aims at strengthening the basic concepts in cell physiology and at providing students with knowledge and practical skills to perform lab activities. The course includes frontal lessons and lab activities. To enter laboratories students should wear lab coats. Whenever required, individual protection devices, such as disposable gloves, will be provided before starting lab activities. The practical activities will be carried out by dividing the students into 2 groups (A-L; M-Z) to reduce the number of students in the lab.

The course aimed to provide the student:

eukaryotic cell structure, function and what are the basic components,structure; function of biomolecules; the principle of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)

The practical activities aimed to provide the student:

acquire competences about to behave in safe way in a laboratory; how to prepare acqueus solutions (including the necessary calculations); how to use the basic instruments of a biology lab, such as micropipettes, centrifuges, spectrophotometer, microscopes, spectrophotometer; thermocycler, electrophoretic cells); how to carry out simple experiments on osmosis, cell isolation from different tissues, cell counting, extraction and quantification of DNA, PCR reactions, electrophoresis of nucleic acids.

Limitations connected to SARS COV2 pandemic may modify the practical activities.

As concerns the teaching methods of this course unit, all students must attend Module 1, 2 online, while Module 3 on health and safety is to be attended in class. Information about Module 3 attendance schedule is available on the website of your degree programme

 

Readings/Bibliography

Lesson slides will be available for students.

Sadava et al Biologia 1. La cellula - Ed Zanichelli

Any book of cell biology will be usefull for further study

Teaching methods

Class lessons in presence will be associated with online activities, practical activities in laboratory.

Limitations connected to SARS COV2 pandemic may modify the practical activities.

Assessment methods

The final exam can be taken if the student have been attended at least 75% of the lessons.

The knowledge will be verified with a written exam of 26 multiple choice questions (1 point correct answer, 0 point no answer, -0.5 point wrong answer) and 4 open questions (evaluate on a range from 0 to 3 points: 0 no answer or wrong answer; 1 point prevalence of incorrect elements with some correct statements, 2 correct answer, but with the presence of incorrect elements or exposed in an ineffective or incomplete way, 3 correct and well described) refer both to the theoretical part and to the practical part.

Teaching tools

Practicals will be carried out in a lab equipped with the required instruments for biotechnological analyses.

Office hours

See the website of Monica Forni

See the website of Augusta Zannoni