Fundamentals of Biology

Before you start

• “There are no formal prerequisites for this course. At MIT, it is usually taken during the freshman (first) year.”

MIT's own preparation:

• Pre-7.01: Getting up to Speed in Biology ↗

From MIT: Syllabus ↗

What you'll learn

• “Identify the general structure and function of carbohydrates, phospholipds, proteins, enzymes and nucleic acids.”
• “Outline the general processes used by the cell to generate cellular energy from sugar and to generate the energy and reducing agent needed for the Calvin cycle.”
• “Describe how DNA was shown to be the genetic material and how DNA is copied.”
• “Describe the structure and regulation of genes, and the structure and synthesis of proteins.”
• “Understand the inheritance of two or more traits based upon Mendelian genetics. Apply this knowledge to drawing and decoding human pedigrees.”
• “Understand the general tools and reagents used in recombinant DNA technologies.”

The full list is on MIT’s syllabus ↗

From MIT: Syllabus ↗

Time

• “MIT expects its students to spend about 150 hours on this course.”
• “you can probably expect to spend an hour or more working through each individual session.”

From MIT: Syllabus ↗

What you need

• “Campbell, N. A., J.B. Reece, et al. Biology. 8th ed. Pearson Benjamin Cummings, 2008.”
  “OCW users will find equal value in most standard introductory biology textbooks.”

Books

• The free book on our Start page for this course is a companion book, not a text this course assigns.
• “Throughout the course, we suggest topics of study that can be found in any standard textbook.”

From MIT: Syllabus ↗