From owner-biophysics@net.bio.net Sun Apr 17 23:00:00 1994
Path: biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!jrwill
From: jrwill@oxytricha.mit.edu (Jamie Williamson)
Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics
Subject: re:undergraduate physical biochemistry
Date: 18 Apr 1994 02:02:08 GMT
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology
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-- 
Kip Murphy   (k-murphy@uiowa.edu) writes:
>We're looking into starting an undergraduate physical biochemistry course in
>our department and would like to start by finding out about other departments
>experiences regarding topics covered, textbooks used, etc.  I would appreciate
>hearing from anyone in this regard.


We came up with a course 3 years ago in biophysical chemistry.  Topics
were:  Thermodynamics applied to macromolecules
	molecular forces
	protein and nucleic acid structure
	X-ray and NMR
	molecular mechanics calculations 

It's really tough to find a good text book that covers everything well. The 
classic Cantor & Schimmel is somewhat out of date, but has good basics.  

We (Carl Pabo and I jointly teach this) tried to unify biophysical chem
through molecular mechanics (MM).  If you understand the emprical energy function
evaluated in MM, you understand molecular forces and a great deal about enthalpy.  
Entropy is a bit tricker of course, but can be addressed using free energy perturbation
calcs.  MM is also useful because it is integral to structure determination by
both X-ray and NMR.  

We settled on Eisenberg & Crothers "Physical Chemistry with Applications to the Bio
Sciences" as a good text for basics.  We just made up handouts and gave background
references for the other things in the course.  There's plenty of good material
out there, but there doesn't seem to be one definitive text.  


Now, if someone were to revise Cantor and Schimmel to reflect recent advances in 
X-ray, NMR and molecular mechanics.....



- Jamie


Jamie Williamson
Dept. of Chemistry
MIT


"If for just one time you could stand inside my shoes,
    you'd know what a drag it is to see you!"
		-- Bob Dylan  

-- 


- Jamie


.