Cell Biology: Orgo 1 Prereq?

[justadream]

Organic Chemistry 1 is listed as a prereq for taking Cell biology at my school. Is Organic Chemistry knowledge really necessary for cell biology? If it helps, the textbook for cell bio is "Essential Cell Biology" by Alberts.

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[flodhi1]

Organic Chemistry 1 is listed as a prereq for taking Cell biology at my school. Is Organic Chemistry knowledge really necessary for cell biology? If it helps, the textbook for cell bio is "Essential Cell Biology" by Alberts.

I know a Biochemistry class that was listed as "Cell Biology and Physiology" at my school. If it's basic Cell Biology then no you do not need Organic chemistry 1. However, I'm pretty sure this class is equivalent to Biochemistry and thus you definitely need Organic chem as a foundation to do well in this class.

 

[Stumpyman]

I took cell bio with only Gen Bio 1 and 2 under my belt, had no trouble with it.

 

[remonde]

My school uses the exact same book and has "Organic 1" as a pre-req as well; however, we're finished with 4/5ths of the semester and I have yet to use any of the knowledge I've learned in Organic Chemistry.

So you will be fine if you were to take the class without an organic chemistry background!

 

[Barcu]

My school was like this too, and there was zero overlap between the two classes. Sometimes I think they put stuff like that so you finish all the lower division science courses before moving to higher division courses. It's not because you need that knowledge. There were other examples of policies like that at my school, and that is the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Usually you could petition to be in the class and the professor would let you. That was pretty common in cases where the course material didn't overlap a ton.

 

[jesse120]

In my experience, prereqs meant very little. Whenever prereqs actually did matter, the profs usually spent the first week or two covering the relevant material from the prereq anyway, which again meant the prereq wasn't really required. If you can, talk to the prof of that class or see if you can look at the syllabus for topics that might require ochem (e.g. biochemistry). As a rule of thumb, if there isn't any biochem on the syllabus, ochem is probably not needed at all.

 

[TriagePreMed]

I'm taking a joint Molecular and Cell Biology course. The organic chemistry covered during your first semester of general chemistry should be enough.