Molecular Biology of the Gene

MBG 324 zooms in on how eukaryotic cells actually run their genomes — not just which genes exist, but how chromatin packaging, transcription factors, splicing machinery, and epigenetic marks decide what gets expressed, when, and in which cell. You'll spend the semester moving between lectures grounded in Lewin's Genes XII and a mandatory wet lab where the grade is built almost entirely from lab exams and bench work, so the molecular logic has to translate into pipettes. It sits on top of your earlier genetics and biochemistry courses and feeds directly into cancer biology, developmental biology, and anything involving gene regulation, which is essentially the rest of the MBG curriculum.