Practical Introduction to Biochemistry

My notes to a physicist friend hoping to join me in a yeast lab

Structure of adenylyl cyclase determined by cryoelectron microscopy. The membrane is shown schematically. (Protein Data Bank)

The lab where I work is interested in the mechanics of basic biological processes, which we dissect using yeast as a model organism.

A good friend, a physicist and technology marketing executive by training and profession, will hopefully be joining me in the lab. These are my informal notes to him to get him up to speed in a practical way for our lab, starting with classical methods. My hope is that he, and others interested in making a career transition into a bio lab, will find this introduction useful as well.

The first installment was on molecular biology which you can find here.

https://medium.com/science-and-philosophy/introduction-to-practical-molecular-biology-dfb4b79192ad

This installment is about biochemistry.

1. Biochemistry

Biochemistry began in the 1800s as a way to study biology and to understand the mechanics of life without the complexity of cells. I also think of biochemistry as illustrating both the powers and limitations of Science’s reductive methods, where we:

• Break up animals into organs.
• Break up organs into cells.