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Micro 5130

Biology by the Numbers


Credit Hour(s): 3 Units
Instructor(s): Gowda
Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Biology 1113; Chemistry 1210, 1220; Statistics 1450, 2450, or 2480; or by permission of instructor.
Role in Microbiology Major: Group 1 Elective

Course Syllabus

Learning Topics:

  • Introduction to biological numeracy – how to estimate and quantitatively reason in biological systems. Order of magnitude estimates and “Fermi calculations.”
  • Sizes and geometry – important sizes and shapes across biological systems (e.g., sizes of molecules, proteins, organelles, cells, etc.). What determines these sizes/shapes, and what are their implications?
  • Concentrations and absolute numbers – what are cells made of, and how much? From inorganic compounds to metabolites to nucleotides and proteins.
  • Energies and forces – the thermal energy scale, bond energies, and energy transfer.
  • Rates and durations – time scales of diffusion/active transport, central dogma, and growth. What processes are often rate limiting?
  • Information and errors – genes, genomes, and mutations. How much information is in genes and genomes, and how often does it go wrong?
  • Biosphere by the numbers – from microbial ecology of the Anthropocene. How much biomass is there on the planet? Of each species? How many microbes? 

Learning Objectives:

Successful students will be able to...

  • Identify important scales and quantities in biological systems (e.g., typical concentrations of key biomolecules, time scales of translation, sizes of genomes, etc.)
  • Translate biological processes into quantitative formulations
  • Extract relevant quantities for performing analyses using either quantitative or visual data from literature
  • Analyze data to make order of magnitude estimates of biological quantities and processes
  • Critique the assumptions, generality, potential failures, and margins of error for quantitative analyses
  • Communicate quantitative reasoning, both verbally and visually