Course Description: Membrane function and electrical activity of cells, neurophysiology, blood and immune, muscle physiology, and cellular endocrinology.
Course Objectives: Review of the nervous, muscular, cardiovascular and endocrine systems with emphasis on the cell and molecular physiology, as opposed to system physiology. Course is taught at the advanced senior/graduate student level. This level requires not just the facts but also how these facts were uncovered from an experimental standpoint. The goal is to provide a basic review of our current understanding of mammalian physiology while at the same time emphasizing how we experimentally acquired this knowledge. The topics that are emphasized are those most commonly seen in the basic science seminar programs that exist in the Departments of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience within medical schools.
Prerequisites: Six credits of biological science, one physiology course and one biochemistry course. In addition, a basic understanding of chemistry, biochemistry and physics is needed. Ideally, one year of each of the following: biology, biochemistry, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry and physics. Contact Dr. Tamkun if you have questions regarding your preparation for this course after you have reviewed the following text:
Before starting this course, it is important that you at least know what the words below mean. For example, if you do not know the difference between the genome and a gene or that protein sequence can be deduced from cDNA sequence, you will have trouble with this course.
Format: 4 credits - 4 hours of lecture per week
Semesters Offered: Fall
Coordinator: M. Tamkun
Text: Medical Physiology, Boron and Boulpaep
The Neuron: Cell and Molecular Biology, Levitan and Kaczmarek
Both texts are optional.
Course Outline:
| Week 1: | Course Introduction; membrane receptors; biochemical signaling; membrane permeability | |
| Week 2: | Biological electricity; membrane potentials; action potentials; voltage-clamp techniques | |
| Week 3: | Voltage-gated ion channels; other ion channels | |
| Week 4: | Functional neuroanatomy; synaptic potentials; neurotransmitter release; neurotransmitter update and NT receptors | |
| Week 5: | NT receptors; synaptic modulation; learning and memory | |
| Week 6: | Autonomic nervous system; sensory transduction; reflexes and pain; audition | |
| Week 7: | Smell and taste; photoreception; molecular motors and cell movement; neuromuscular junction and E/C coupling | |
| Week 8: | Skeletal muscle contraction; disease of skeletal muscle; cardiovascular anatomy; heart and electrical properties | |
| Week 9: | Heart and electrical properties; heart and contractile properties; myocardial disease | |
| Week 10: | Myocardial disease and other channelopathies; smooth muscle; vascular disease; GI cellular physiology and disease | |
| Week 11: | Organization of the endocrine system; hormone chemistry, biosynthesis, and secretion; principles of endocrine signaling - H20 soluble hormones | |
| Week 12: | Principles of endocrine signaling - lipid soluble hormones; hormone-receptor interactions | |
| Week 13: | G-protein coupled receptors; receptor tyrosine kinases | |
| Week 14: | Receptor kinases; pituitary development | |
| Week 15: | Development of the endocrine pancreas; diabetes mellitus |
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