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Cell biology help
- Thread starter I wannabe a doc
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For the MCAT, you don't need to know them. Maybe only Hexokinase and PFK for glycolysis.
For surviving biochem, just write them over and over again. I got butcher paper and put it up in my room. Some people make acronyms too...
For surviving biochem, just write them over and over again. I got butcher paper and put it up in my room. Some people make acronyms too...
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I got a white board and wrote the cycle out over and over again :-/ then wrote it on a piece of paper and had a friend check it.
Take out 3 sheets of paper. On one, draw the cycles over and over until you can do it from memory using only the names of enzymes and molecules. On the next, draw the structures over and over until you know them all. Once you can do that, draw out the cycle using the structures and names until you can do it reproducibly.
Best of luck.
Best of luck.
Draw the pathways of each cycle and try to see WHAT is causing WHICH reaction and WHY. don't look at it and try to memorize it, as this didn't work for me. Try to see draw it and see all the reactions/changes in action..
Learn one cycle at a time and then connect them all together..
Eddie
Learn one cycle at a time and then connect them all together..
Eddie
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treat it in giant chunks, memorize each at a time
1st - USING ATP through first 5 of glycolysis, hexokinase, triose phosphate, what not
2nd - MAKING ATP through second 5 steps
Krebs cycle, the enzyme name tells what it does (isocitrate decarboxylase - so lose CO2)
1st - USING ATP through first 5 of glycolysis, hexokinase, triose phosphate, what not
2nd - MAKING ATP through second 5 steps
Krebs cycle, the enzyme name tells what it does (isocitrate decarboxylase - so lose CO2)
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There are some interactive web sites that have games and such that can be helpful.
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Really..? My lab was easy as hell, it's just the fact that for reason beyond the students fault, every experiment we did all semester failed (chemicals were old, things weren't ran long enough to transfer proteins, whatever, etc). Only one time did our experiments not fail out of the whole semester.
Anyhow, I memorized the cycle by writing it over and over and over again. I had to know it for bio2 cause our teacher had a rep for making things far more difficult than they should've been. I abbreviated some things, and when I couldn't remember certain names, I would try to relate the name to something from everyday life. Memorize step by step. I even made little charts with blank spaces so I could use them as practice sheets. Like someone above me said, memorize in chunks, not all at once.
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I didn't like cell bio lab either. Like in La Doctora's case, we had a lot of experiments that simply didn't work. It was pretty easy, but with the exception of two or three labs, it seemed incredibly pointless, as we didn't learn much technique and most of the concepts demonstrated were self-explanatory. Micro lab was so much better.
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This is really more of a biochem question than a cell bio question... Anyway, I found it really helped to understand what happens chemically along the pathways. Then the enzyme names can help you along the way and you really only need to flat out memorize the initial reactant and the products. If you understand it chemically, the memorization becomes more concrete, too. This was especially helpful with the Kreb's (TCA) cycle.
Oh dear...I'm taking this lab next semester so that I can be done with my lab requirements for Biology. I'm in genetics lab right now and it is one of the worse labs for me so far. Anyone know if I should be expecting same kind of thing for cell bio lab?
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It's just a huge bunch of work for nothing. I think it's totally useless IMO. I would say if you have ever worked in a research lab, you don't have to take this stupid class. Plus, our teacher grades so hard. 👎
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You should ask other students at your school. Labs vary a lot school to school and I think a lot depends on the professor in charge of them. For example, I took gen chem at my regular college and we were required to use the carbon copy notebooks and take notes in a particular (ie formal lab report) way. Then I took orgo at my local state school (summer course) and no-one cared about that sort of thing. My point is, if you want to make an assessment about what to expect for a particular lab, the best thing you can do is talk to people that have taken it at the same place you are going to take it.
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100% agree. Our lab was 3 hours and 50 minutes long and more than half of the lab time, we were O.K.'d by our t.a. to leave the lab, go have lunch, go buy food and drinks, even go to sort out problems in financial aid on the other side of campus... Some processes took so long that I often went to chemistry tutoring or did online chem homework in a computer lab and came back scared that I missed something, but figured out I actually came back and things were still at a standstill in the lab. It's more of a frustration than anything else... words cannot describe the precious minutes and hours I wasted anticipating something would happen correctly in cell bio lab... instead of studying for other classes.
And... the lab reports were a pain in the.... you know.
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I made mnemonics so I'd learn the types of reactions in order. If you say them over and over again, you get a sort of rhythm. If you know the types of reactions, then you should know what the structures look like. The only enzymes I ever had to learn were for the ones where the steps only went one direction.
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100% agree. Our lab was 3 hours and 50 minutes long and more than half of the lab time, we were O.K.'d by our t.a. to leave the lab, go have lunch, go buy food and drinks, even go to sort out problems in financial aid on the other side of campus... Some processes took so long that I often went to chemistry tutoring or did online chem homework in a computer lab and came back scared that I missed something, but figured out I actually came back and things were still at a standstill in the lab. It's more of a frustration than anything else... words cannot describe the precious minutes and hours I wasted anticipating something would happen correctly in cell bio lab... instead of studying for other classes.
And... the lab reports were a pain in the.... you know.
Our labs are 7-8 hours a week. So freaking fail.
