Experimental Approaches in Molecular and Cellular Biology

MBG 230 is the course where you stop treating lab techniques as black boxes and start understanding *why* each one works — the physical-chemical logic behind restriction enzymes, cloning, PCR, sequencing, and the cell-based assays that show up everywhere in modern molecular biology. You'll work through Brown's gene cloning textbook alongside primary literature, give presentations, and do homework and a project aimed at interpreting real experimental data rather than memorizing protocols. It's the methods backbone that makes upper-year MBG labs and research electives actually make sense, and it's where you learn to read a figure skeptically instead of trusting whatever the authors claim.