Membrane Biophysics (2 credits) is offered every two years. The credit requirements include a final, oral examination and, unlike most other courses at Rockefeller, participation in a series of lab practicals. This is an intensive course consisting of two all-day laboratory sessions and three lectures every week. Ten students registered this spring for the course, and the comments of five of them have been compiled below.

Comments:

Membrane Biophysics, it seems, is a rather misleading title for this course. To some, the title inspired “images of membrane dynamics, lipid–protein interactions and kinetics, and crystallographic protein structure models,” while others expected that the course would cover aspects of ion transport as well as protein transport across membranes. However, this “illusion faded away within the first 20 minutes of lecture one, as equations for capacitance, conductance and calculus nomenclature” emerged on the board of the “completely packed” 3rd-floor Bronk conference room, and one realized that this course should really be called “Electrophysiology.” The “very stimulating,” “inspiring,” and “interactive” lectures constituted the strong point of the course, and featured Rockefeller’s own David Gadsby, Sanford Simon, Jim Hudspeth, Tom Sakmar and recent Nobel laureate Rod MacKinnon, as well as guest speakers Fred Sigworth, Steve Siegelbaum and Alessio Accardi. The lecture content was balanced between current experimental research from guest speakers to reviews of classical electrophysiology.

The practicals were centered around key concepts such as the resting and action potential, neuromuscular transmission, the endplate potential and quantal nature of synaptic responses, and also covered techniques such as 2-microelectrode and patch recording in oocytes. Although the lab sessions have the advantage of presenting theory in a practical setting, “beyond pen and paper,” the majority of the surveyed students felt that the labwork was “excessively long,” “tedious,” and “frustrating” as it took a few good hours to get the experimental set-up to work.

Nevertheless, students found the course “rewarding,” “worthwhile to take,” and highly recommended to anyone interested in neuroscience.

Ratings given out of 10 with 10 being the highest rating.