Endless reports and hours in the lab; the bane of all Biology major’s existence: BIOL 340. As its name suggests, BIOL 340 is an intense lab that teaches different cell biology techniques, from fluorescence microscopy to SDS-PAGE.
format of the course
BIOL 340 is a 3 hour weekly lab course with a separate 1 hour lecture portion. However don’t be fooled, often most of the class were unable to finish on time and labs ended up being on average 4-4.5 hours long. Since each lab featured a new lab technique, pre-readings were very dense. There were also in-class pre-reading quizzes, so memorizing every little detail was crucial (imagine spending hours reading about the different steps in SDS-PAGE, but then being asked what SDS stands for…).
These labs were usually done in a group of four of five (random partners), and I was lucky to be in a good group. Each group was given a different mutant yeast strain to practice on using the lab technique of the week. In the later parts of the course, we had to run an independent study on this same yeast strain, which was by far the most stressful portion of the course. Continue reading