Molecular Genetics

MBG 223 is where you stop treating DNA as a static information store and start working through the machinery that actually copies, repairs, recombines, and reads it, mostly in prokaryotes, because that's where the mechanisms were first dissected and where they're cleanest to study. Expect two midterms plus a final on the lecture side, but the real time sink is the obligatory lab: twelve sessions of microtools, reports, and a small project, alongside a presentation you'll defend in front of peers. It builds directly on the introductory MBG sequence and sets up everything downstream, eukaryotic gene expression, recombinant DNA, and the cloning courses, so the chapters on replication, recombination, and the operon are the vocabulary you'll be using for the next two years.