Science without Borders - Molecular Biology
As you likely are already aware of, molecular biologists now have at their disposal an extensive "molecular toolbox" capable of taking on and answering most biological problems which is central to making new and important discoveries. The course package in Molecular Biology gives you both theoretical knowledge and hands-on skills in these methods.
There is a lot of Molecular biology happening at Umeå University! There are many research groups of international significance within areas of microbiology, cell biology, chemical biology, genetic model organisms, immunology, systems biology, sensory systems, cancer biology, developmental biology, medical biology and immunology.
Molecular biology is also very much present at several research centers within the university such as Umeå Center for Molecular Medicine, Umeå Center for Microbial Research and Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (which is a partnership with European Molecular Biology Laboratory, www.embl.org).
You have the possibility to attend a number of courses that should take your knowledge and experience of molecular biology to a point where you feel confident in that you are in a good position to be able to contribute to a research project in molecular biology.
The study year starts out with a course that focuses on training in critical thinking, research methodology, experimental design and your communication skills in molecular biology. It is a course where you get in-depth experience of primary research literature and you discuss data and the research process with active researchers.
During the second course you will study how molecular cell biology have been, and continue to be, at the center of understanding cancer disease, finding new diagnostics and therapies. This course includes both theory and experimental exercises as well as presentations of current research by active cancer researchers.
The third course will give you considerable practical training in central molecular biological techniques, the knowledge on how to interpret your experiments and use then to use methods for problemsolving.
At the end of the study year you have the option to either learn, and practically train in, functional genomics approaches which include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics or alternatively to do an individual project.
If you choose to do a project you will join an active research group and focus on a current research question and train in the techniques that are used to address the question. The project is examined by your presentations, both in format of a research poster presentation and as a proper research report. Welcome!
