Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

· Proteins: biological functions, structure. Fibrous and globular proteins. Haemoglobin and myoglobin: structure and mechanism of action. Relationship between oxygen transport and CO2 transport.
· Enzymes: structure and properties. Enzymatic kinetics. Enzymatic regulation, competitive, non-competitive inhibition, from product to feed-back. Constitutive and inducible enzymes, phosphorylation and irreversible activation. Description of enzymatic cascades.
· General concepts of metabolism: Catabolism and anabolism. Partitioning of metabolic processes. Metabolic map concept. Free energy. Coupled reaction. Biochemical reactions (bioenergetics), biological oxidations, the role of ATP: structure and function. Respiratory chain and oxidative phosphorylation
· Biological signalling: mechanism of extracellular signal transduction, second messengers and their functions at the metabolic level
Glucose metabolism: glycolysis and regulation. The shunt of pentoses phosphates. The carbohydrate reserves: glycogen (glycogen synthesis and glycogenolysis). Gluconeogenesis Krebs cycle and regulation
· Lipid metabolism: Fatty acids and β−oxidation.Lipid de novo synthesis. Lipid reserves: triglycerides of adipose tissue (lipogenesis and lipolysis) Lipoproteins. Cholesterol metabolism. ketonic bodies
· Metabolism of amino acids. Nitrogen balance and the urea cycle. Synthesis of purine and pyrimidine bases, biogenic amines. Heme catabolism
· Metabolic integrations. Gluconeogenesis, fasting-feeding cycles. Blood glucose regulation. Hormonal regulation of metabolism.
· Nutrition. Principles of human nutrition.
· Introduction to protein analysis techniques

DNA structure: Physico-chemical properties of nucleic acids, forces that stabilize and destabilize the double helix (topology),hierarchical organization of chromatin and chromosomes, histones and histone modifications. Outline of epigenetics
DNA replication and its control: replicative fork and replicons, enzymes involved in DNA replication, telomeres, DNA repair
RNA structure: classification of cellular RNAs; structure and function of the main RNA classes; maturation of the RNA
DNA transcription and its control: RNA polymerases; the structure of prokaryotic and eukaryotic promoters; transcription (beginning,lengthening, termination) in prokaryotes and eukaryotes; the outline of transcriptional regulation
Protein synthesis; the ribosome: structural and functional aspects; activation of amino acids; the reaction of t-RNA-aminoacyl transferase and structural-functional characteristics of the enzyme; description of the three phases of protein synthesis