Biochem on MCAT

[deleted92121]

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I am finding the hardest information for myself to learn involves biochemistry. How much is really on the MCAT? How in depth do I really need to go?

dxu

 

[Phlame217]

Biochem seems to be one of the more "whipped cream" classes.

Your organic, gen chem, biology/zoology, physics, etc are your core "ice cream" classes of the sunday.

Classes like genetics, anatomy, histology, biochem are all the extra classes that will re-enforce materials and give more depth to them.

 

[Scean]

I took biochem last semester, and It has certainly helped, heres a general list of topics that biochem is useful for,list isnt not comprehensive and most of it is pretty basic and all of it is covered in 1st year bio to some degree:

Macomolecules:
Carbs:
anomeric carbons, alpha beta linkage, seeing ribose vs deoxyribose, etc

Proteins: Probably the most important in terms of how much I see it on the MCAT
STRUCTURE: primary secondary...etc; properties/things involved of each
Amino acid structures, or more generally which are aromatic vs acidic vs basic
Enzyme activity, inhibition, kinetics km, vmax all that jazz not tooo deep into it

Lipids: general structure/chemistry

Nucleic Acids: A T/U C G, pyrimidines vs purines

PROCESSES, detailed yeilds of ATP mostly, and location
Glycolysis, PDC, Citric acid/krebs, Electron Transport, Beta ox

also genetic processes: DNA replication, transcrip, translate

thats all i can think of right now, its late....

good luck

 

[mterp45]

I am finding the hardest information for myself to learn involves biochemistry. How much is really on the MCAT? How in depth do I really need to go?

dxu

well I took biochemistry, and it had a tremendous amount of MCAT content. It seems as if all their metabolism, and some of their digestive and excretory passages were right out of my book. It enables me to skim through those passages, and get right to the questions. I think the organic chemistry part of biochem (everything involving amino acid and carbohydrates structures) can be easily memorized and should be the least of your worries as long as you memorize the catalytic and structural details of the amino acids. The parts that the prep books don't offer you are the indepth analysis of glycolysis, CTA , and oxidative. Every prep book I have looked at seems to simply skim the surface on the subjects. Most of the Biochem passages deal with:
protein turnover, fatty acid metabolism, gluconeogenesis, the urea cycle, Glycogen metabolism, the Integration of metabolism and enzyme catalytic strategies.
These are topics that you would cover in detail in a biochem class or at least at UMD. However, because informaton about these topics are usually in the passages. I wouldn't say taking biochem is necessary but I think some of the passages can be tremendlously hard to comprehend without the background knowledge.

 

[smuwillobrien]

Personally, I think biochemistry was probably the most helpful class I took in my undergraduate career that prepared me for the MCAT. It isn't important to remember all kinds of metabolic pathways, and all of that - it's much more important to understand things like enzyme kinetics, allosteric modulation, pathway control mechanisms, ... I think molecular biology is also very important. Increase the amount of time you spend on these biological sciences, and decrease the amount you spend on things like organic chemistry.

 

[RSAgator]

it's not necessarily helpful in the facts you'll learn, but helpful in the big picture sense. Where biology just scrapes the surface of things biochemistry really goes in depth, and so it will both reinforce things you've already learned as well as give you the knowledge to better understand questions/passages you haven't learned.