Biochemistry and Biophysics
The Program in Biochemistry & Biophysics (BCBP) is grounded in the idea that interdisciplinary training in the physical sciences leads to the deepest and most innovative understanding of living systems. Advances in understanding biological phenomena have often come directly from the development of tools from chemistry and physics, such as the use of radioisotopes and fluorophores, or the custom chemical synthesis of DNA strands. The field of molecular biology was born in the 1930s and 40s when many of the giants, including Bohr and Schrödinger, of the earlier quantum revolution turned their attention to biology, specifically, in the words of Gunther Stent, to “the physical basis of genetic information.” Today, biochemistry and biophysics continue to lead the way in scientific developments and discoveries. Two of the greatest scientific discoveries of the decade are in biochemistry and biophysics. The first was the rapid development in 2020 of lipid-encapsulated mRNA vaccines against SARS CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The second is the advent of AlphaFold, a computational neural network that can predict a protein's structure from just the protein sequence. The Alphafold paper published in 2021 has ~23,000 citations in just the first three years and will enable drug design, personal medicine, and more biomedical breakthroughs.
The BCBP Program began with two majors in 2012, and now averages ~30 majors a year. The goal of our curriculum is to build foundations in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science so that students are well equipped to take a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the molecular components and forces that drive living systems. The BCBP Program includes ~10 participating faculty members from the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics who are committed to supporting the education and individual development of BCBP students in the classroom and beyond. Faculty research labs engage students in research projects that use experimental, theoretical, and computational tools to explore and explain living systems. These research labs provide extensions of the learning and training in the classroom, and welcome students as trainees and collaborators.