MCD BIO 144
Molecular Biology of Cellular Processes and Experimental Applications of Theory
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisites: Life Sciences 3, 4, 23L. Not open for credit to students with credit for Chemistry 153B. Development of thorough understanding of fundamentals of modern molecular biology both from perspective of known molecular mechanisms for regulating fundamental processes in cells and from theoretical applied perspective for using molecular biology as laboratory tool. Special emphasis on molecular mechanisms that relate to chromatin and histone modifications, DNA replication and repair, transposition, microRNAs, meiosis, and splicing. Application of molecular biology as tool to understand embryonic development, reprogramming, cancer, and stem cells. Development of sophisticated understanding of DNA, RNA, and protein as well as capability of designing experiments to address fundamental questions in biology and interpreting experimental data. Letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - Be prepared for this class. Genuinely your TA is your best friend in this class as well as making friends and studying together. Professor Nagano unfortunately did not help much in this course and at the end of the quarter unfairly curved only the A- students and nobody else. The lectures were just cahoot quizzes, His online lectures you were assumed to watch them and learn from them? like multiple 45-1 hour online lectured weekly in which you cant understand him half the time even when using the transcribing tool. The quizzes aren't too bad but the material tested on for the midterms and final exam many times contained material that was never directly taught from the course and was supposed to be second hand knowledge from what you "deduced" from the material from the lecture videos. To be honest overall from this course I wouldn't want to take professor Nakano again but if you do, befriend your TA and make sure to bug them and the professor about material you might not understand. Also exams contain many mistakes purposely and are meant to confuse students.
Winter 2023 - Be prepared for this class. Genuinely your TA is your best friend in this class as well as making friends and studying together. Professor Nagano unfortunately did not help much in this course and at the end of the quarter unfairly curved only the A- students and nobody else. The lectures were just cahoot quizzes, His online lectures you were assumed to watch them and learn from them? like multiple 45-1 hour online lectured weekly in which you cant understand him half the time even when using the transcribing tool. The quizzes aren't too bad but the material tested on for the midterms and final exam many times contained material that was never directly taught from the course and was supposed to be second hand knowledge from what you "deduced" from the material from the lecture videos. To be honest overall from this course I wouldn't want to take professor Nakano again but if you do, befriend your TA and make sure to bug them and the professor about material you might not understand. Also exams contain many mistakes purposely and are meant to confuse students.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Overall I think I had a love-hate relationship with this class. You go through a lotttt of material (especially before the midterm) but it is very interesting content, albeit hard to remember all the proteins you learn. Dr. Rigeuer is a very kind and approachable prof and I liked how she lectures and the overall atmosphere of the class. For discussion sections, we would read a paper each week and then talk about it and do a homework assignment answering some questions about it. They switched teaching styles a few week into the quarter which was a bit jarring, but not too bad (from the TA just going over the paper's methods and figures to having students break into groups and each group explains a figure to the class; they also started doing separate videos going over the methodology that we were supposed to watch before discussion, but they never actually told us about the videos or told us when they were uploaded which was pretty annoying). Luckily, the papers were not tested on in the exams, because some were a bit hard to understand. I also definitely would not recommend taking this class before you take MCDB 165A or 138, because we sort of just jumped straight into the papers vs for the other classes (at least with the profs I had, Sagasti and Farmer) they walked us through how to read and understand papers. I think I have only two actual qualms with this class. First, the midterm is very very hard and stressful. It was about 50 FRQS (about 35ish short responses aka a couple words or a sentence, and about 15 longer data interpretation questions) in the class time of 75 minutes so it was a very big time crunch. I barely finished everything, and I know many people did not even finish. The test was open note, but ofc with the timing that wasn't super feasible. Luckily yhis isn't the case with the final, because it was online and untimed, with multiple days to do it. The next thing I didn't like about that class was uncertainty about grading. Before the midterm, Dr Rigeuer said that if you pass both the MT and final, the higher score can replace the other. Then after the midterm, she said even if you got a 0 on the MT, the final would replace it (she implied that it doesn't go the other way around, the MT replacing the final, but she never actually said that so even now I still don't know if it could). She said this was in the syllabus but I read through it a few times after that and this grading scheme is never mentioned. Additionally, as of the time I'm writing this, we never got our final exam grade back so I don't know how I did on it, just what my final grade in the class is. In the syllabus she says the lowest HW and quiz grades are dropped but this wasn't reflected in Canvas like I've experienced with other classes; I'm assuming they did that when calculating the final grades to submit but it would've been nice to actually see it. The syllabus also says the person with the top grade in the class gets their grade bumped up to 100%, and everyone else gets their grade bumped up the same amount, but again they never actually showed them doing this and didn't make an announcement about it or anything, so I have no clue if that actually happened. However, I think it is safe to say that Dr Rigeuer does care about her students' learning and their grades, and I think she does try to give as many people an A as she can. So, overall a tough class but a rewarding one (if you like molbio) and you will ultimately end up okay in the end. Grading breakdown: 10% Discussion attendance 25% Homework 10% Quizzes (started online but they found people using AI so they moved to in person; data interpretation questions that can be a bit tricky if you don't understand the data they present but overall not horrible) 25% Midterm 30% Final
Fall 2025 - Overall I think I had a love-hate relationship with this class. You go through a lotttt of material (especially before the midterm) but it is very interesting content, albeit hard to remember all the proteins you learn. Dr. Rigeuer is a very kind and approachable prof and I liked how she lectures and the overall atmosphere of the class. For discussion sections, we would read a paper each week and then talk about it and do a homework assignment answering some questions about it. They switched teaching styles a few week into the quarter which was a bit jarring, but not too bad (from the TA just going over the paper's methods and figures to having students break into groups and each group explains a figure to the class; they also started doing separate videos going over the methodology that we were supposed to watch before discussion, but they never actually told us about the videos or told us when they were uploaded which was pretty annoying). Luckily, the papers were not tested on in the exams, because some were a bit hard to understand. I also definitely would not recommend taking this class before you take MCDB 165A or 138, because we sort of just jumped straight into the papers vs for the other classes (at least with the profs I had, Sagasti and Farmer) they walked us through how to read and understand papers. I think I have only two actual qualms with this class. First, the midterm is very very hard and stressful. It was about 50 FRQS (about 35ish short responses aka a couple words or a sentence, and about 15 longer data interpretation questions) in the class time of 75 minutes so it was a very big time crunch. I barely finished everything, and I know many people did not even finish. The test was open note, but ofc with the timing that wasn't super feasible. Luckily yhis isn't the case with the final, because it was online and untimed, with multiple days to do it. The next thing I didn't like about that class was uncertainty about grading. Before the midterm, Dr Rigeuer said that if you pass both the MT and final, the higher score can replace the other. Then after the midterm, she said even if you got a 0 on the MT, the final would replace it (she implied that it doesn't go the other way around, the MT replacing the final, but she never actually said that so even now I still don't know if it could). She said this was in the syllabus but I read through it a few times after that and this grading scheme is never mentioned. Additionally, as of the time I'm writing this, we never got our final exam grade back so I don't know how I did on it, just what my final grade in the class is. In the syllabus she says the lowest HW and quiz grades are dropped but this wasn't reflected in Canvas like I've experienced with other classes; I'm assuming they did that when calculating the final grades to submit but it would've been nice to actually see it. The syllabus also says the person with the top grade in the class gets their grade bumped up to 100%, and everyone else gets their grade bumped up the same amount, but again they never actually showed them doing this and didn't make an announcement about it or anything, so I have no clue if that actually happened. However, I think it is safe to say that Dr Rigeuer does care about her students' learning and their grades, and I think she does try to give as many people an A as she can. So, overall a tough class but a rewarding one (if you like molbio) and you will ultimately end up okay in the end. Grading breakdown: 10% Discussion attendance 25% Homework 10% Quizzes (started online but they found people using AI so they moved to in person; data interpretation questions that can be a bit tricky if you don't understand the data they present but overall not horrible) 25% Midterm 30% Final
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