Biochemistry and Molecular Biology - How Life Works

by Kevin G. Ahern

Biochemistry is a fascinating subject that explains how all life on Earth functions. Unfortunately, the details of biochemistry often cause students to get lost, and consequently, they don’t get to see the big picture. Without connections to real life, the details simply become things to memorize for tests—and are soon forgotten.
These lectures were designed to help everyone learn and enjoy biochemistry using explanations of real-world biochemistry problems as tools to understand the subject—while still introducing college-level biochemistry and not dumbing it down. And without any need for memorization, you won’t spend your time memorizing facts, giving much more time to listen to explanations and think through the concepts.
Biochemistry combines biology—the science of life—and chemistry, the science of molecules. Biochemistry, then, is the molecular basis of life. Every single thing that makes people alive is due to biological molecules and their interactions.

Genres: Science, Biology, Chemistry, Nonfiction

ebook

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Cav · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and informative course. Professor Kevin Ahern has an engaging teaching style.
"Biochemistry and Molecular Biology - How Life Works" covers a lot of ground; across 36 lectures, each ~30mins. Everything from the structure and importance of water to life, to amino acids and proteins, to DNA and RNA, enzymes, ATP, the Kreb cycle, antioxidants, the microbiome, neurotransmitters, and many others.
My only criticism of this course is that it is advertised on their website as being "Designed for anyone curious about how life works..." Not really... This is a fairly technical course. The subject matter is obviously very complex. While Professor Ahern does a great job of relaying this technical material in an accessible and engaging manner, someone with no previous knowledge of both chemistry and biology will most likely be completely lost.
So, while I would definitely recommend this course to anyone interested in biochemistry and molecular biology, you will want to be sure you have a decent literacy of both biology and chemistry first, before starting this one.
4.5 stars.

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

This edition of the course material consists of 6 DVDs containing 36 lectures, and a 408-page guidebook. The 36 lectures consist first of about 24 on biochemistry, and then 12 on molecular biology. This is a fairly recent release (2019) from The Great Courses, and the content is up-to-date, with additional mention of specific recent research at the end of some of the lectures. The biochemistry is presented at a level that assumes basic but not detailed familiarity with physical chemistry, and organic chemistry. Even so, the information density is one of the highest I have every experienced from The Great Courses. I found myself making heavy use of the replay and pause buttons, examining the illustrations, and looking things up in the guidebook. Next, the molecular biology lectures move to a more abstract level, presenting the actions of the proteins and etc on a more conceptual basis. By the end of the course, the presentation had transitioned almost completely into the paradigms of human medicine - %s of population and forms of treatment. The whole Central Dogma of DNA/RNA/protein expression was reviewed in about two lectures – I think it is a presumed prerequisite. I had previously viewed/read a 72-lecture course on Biology: The Science of Life by Stephen Nowicki (2004), and glad of it. If I am giving you the impression that this is NOT introductory level, that is correct. I studied a significant amount of time outside of the lectures in order to keep up. I would not even consider listening to this course on an audio-only basis.

Kevin Ahern himself is easy to understand, but a little quirky. In many of the lectures, he recites a verse or sings a ditty he has written that describes the material of the lecture. Wow. And I thought I was a geek. Apparently, at OSU there are student acapella vocal groups that include his material.

I would give this six stars if goodreads allowed for that. I learned so much, and will probably view/read it again after some time has passed.

The 36 lectures are:
1 Biochemistry Is the Science of Us
2 Why Water Is Essential for Life
3 Amino Acids: 20 Building Blocks of Life
4 From Peptide Bonds to Protein Structure
5 Protein Folding, Misfolding, and Disorder
6 Hemoglobin Function Follows Structure
7 Enzymes' Amazing Speed and Specificity
8 Enzyme Regulation in Cells
9 Fatty Acids, Fats, and Other Lipids
10 Sugars: Glucose and the Carbohydrates
11 ATP and Energy Transformations in Cells
12 Breaking Down Sugars and Fatty Acids
13 Metabolism Meets at the Citric Acid Cycle
14 Energy Harvesting in Animals and Plants
15 How Animals Make Carbs and Fats
16 Cholesterol, Membranes, Lipoproteins
17 Metabolic Control during Exercise and Rest
18 How Plants Make Carbs and Other Metabolites
19 Recycling Nitrogen: Amino Acids, Nucleotides
20 Eating, Antioxidants, and the Microbiome
21 Hormones, Stress, and Cell Division
22 Neurotransmitters, the Brain, and Addiction
23 The Biochemistry of Our Senses
24 From Biochemistry to Molecular Biology
25 DNA and RNA: Information in Structure
26 DNA Replication in Bacteria; PCR in the Lab
27 Chromosome Replication, Telomeres, Aging
28 DNA Mismatch and Excision Repair
29 DNA Recombination, Gene Editing, CRISPR
30 Transcribing DNA to RNA
31 Translating RNA into Proteins
32 Protein-Synthesis Controls and Epigenetics
33 Human Genetic Disease and Gene Therapy
34 Cancer Mechanisms and Treatments
35 Biotechnology, Stem Cells, Synthetic Biology
36 Omics: Genomics, Proteomics, Transcriptomics

Here’s some comments I made regarding individual lectures as I went through it.

Lecture 6, "Hemoglobin Function Follows Structure", Wow, fetal hemoglobin protein function on the chemical level is amazing!

Lecture 9, "Fatty Acids, Fats, and Other Lipids", Just a long list of chemical names, molecular structures, and biological functions. Sheer memorization; no concepts.

Lecture 12, "Breaking Down Sugars and Fatty Acids", I don't think I will remember the specifics of all ten steps of the metabolic pathway of sugar Glycolysis, but boy does that crank out ATP.

Lecture 13, "Metabolism Meets at the Citric Acid Cycle", Nicely done, to present the cycle forwards, and then re-exercise the catalyzing mechanisms in reverse, from alpha-ketoglutarate back to citrate and out of the mitochondria into the cytoplasm, as takes place in cancer cells.

Lecture 16, "Cholesterol, Membranes, Lipoproteins", 28 steps to synthesize cholesterol, and Dr. Ahern makes a song out of it, to the tune of The Ants Go Marching. You gotta love a geek.

Lecture 18, "How Plants Make Carbs And Other Metabolites" I needed to go over the section on the Calvin Cycle several times because of illegible graphic used to illustrate reduction, resynthesis of Ru5BP, and carbon fixation phases.

Lecture 24. “From Biochemistry to Molecular Biology” This lecture is a hodgepodge of additional biochemistry topics. At the 2/3 point, the series will now transition from biochemistry to molecular biology.

Lecture 26 "DNA Replication in Bacteria; PCR in the Lab" These lectures are from 2019 - but polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has become a household word in this era of COVID testing.

Lecture 29 “DNA Recombination, Gene Editing, CRISPR” These molecular biology lectures are more concept-oriented than the detailed biochemistry lectures. In one lecture, this covered cell division through mitosis and meiosis, recombination and swapping in eukaryotic reproduction, homologous end joining, homology-directed repair, antibody creation, gene activation and deletion, substitution, and CRISPR.

Lecture 36 “Omics: Genomics, Proteomics, Transcriptomics” I feel like I am being prepped for med school.

[Pat Watt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't finished this, yet, keeping it for reference. I completed the first ten or so lectures and found it to be well organized and structured, though sometimes a bit over my head. Since my scientific training is obsolete there was tons of new information to absorb. The lecturer got to be pretty annoying after a while. I will keep this to refer to in the future as I delve more into evolutions.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first 5 chapters are very interesting, but the rest is very hard to follow for a beginner. It was almost impenetrable with jargon that I ended up skimming and searching for the keyword on google. I'm sure it is really good for a first year biochemistry student or something. Has plenty of good graphics too.

[Kimberly Ollison · Rating 5 out of 5]

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