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What are third-year MICRO courses like? (1 Viewer)

Manipp

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I have a question, for the people who've done third year microbiology courses, what they are like? I'm tossing up doing some MICR courses versus molecular biology courses (way too many courses during the first semester). Especially immunology, microbial genetics, and environmental micro, has anyone done them and what did they think?

Or, on the reverse side, has anyone done molecular biology of proteins/nucleic acids?

Thanks muchly. :)
 

Survivor39

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What would you like to know specifically? I've done all MICR courses and enjoyed all of them in different ways.
 

Manipp

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Sorry, was away from internet for a while.

Well, just a sort of general feel for the courses. What topics roughly did it cover, how easy/comprehensible was the content, what kind of labs were there, how bad were the assignments, how the lecturers were, whether it was interesting (which I know is subjective, but some courses I'd consider worse than others, ie second-year genetics and BIOS1101).


I'm mostly interested in immunology and microbial genetics, and molecular biology of proteins if you've done it. Thanks :)
 

Survivor39

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Yep I know what you mean. I personally hate BIOS1101 and Genetics myself. But luckily, none of the 3rd year courses are that bad. Those two are the worst courses I've done in 4 years of my undergraduates.

Microbial genetics is really fun (nothing like 2nd year genetics) but it's a difficult course so you need to understand the concepts very well. You learn about bacterial transformation, different sequencing and microarrays methods, HIV and bird flu genetics, bacteriophages etc in lectures, then in the lab, there is a lot of work because the experiments are so long and complex but it's a lot of fun.

Immunology is always one of my favourite but the course cooridinator who ran the course has gone so I'm not sure who ever is running the course is as good as her. You learn from everything T cells to B cells to applications of immunology in clinical settings. The interaction between the immune system and paghogens will also be explored. The lab is a difficult in my year because we have to form groups of 4-5 and we have to design our own immuno experiment from scratch and find the answer to what immunology questions we have in our mind. I'm sure it's changed now becaue it was very expensive to run (e.g. order different reagents and/or mice for 20 different groups). Now you just have set practicals like other courses e.g. learn how to do ELISA etc. I find this course easy just because I am interested in immunology and the concepts come naturally to me. But people said immunology was hard so I'm not sure.

Molecular Biology of Proteins - haven't done it but friends who has said it's pretty good.

You will thoroughly enjoy all of the MICR courses. None of them are boring and difficult to pass if you put in the work. You do have a lot of learn so be prepared and don't fall behind!

I hope this helps.
 

Lydia_88

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Thumbs up to BIOS1101...complete utter rote learning...yet i managed to pass :rofl:
 
J

juvekickass

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BIOS1101 was MESSED UP! i can't agree more. Too much material, bad tutors, boring labs, etc. I fell asleep during my BIOS final exam, no joke. I only got 63 =[
 

deadfishlol

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Hello I just sensed some BIOS1101-hate and I thought I'd join in.
 

Lydia_88

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BIOS1101 was MESSED UP! i can't agree more. Too much material, bad tutors, boring labs, etc. I fell asleep during my BIOS final exam, no joke. I only got 63 =[
hahaha.....i left the hour 45 mins after the exam started xD..... but the material is quite dry :(
 

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