Courses
CHM 638: Biophysical Chemistry
High resolution x-ray structures of biological macromolecules can provide significant insights into biological systems. Quite often, however, structural results alone are insufficient for a complete understanding of the biological problem requiring solution data from biophysical and biochemical measurements to fill the gap. Biophysical methods not only complement structural results but also permit validation of structural data as crystal structures can sometimes suffer, at least in parts, from artifacts of packing interactions.
CHM 638 is a three-credit course that covers concepts such as biological thermodynamics as applied to macromolecular folding, ligand binding and biological transport, kinetics of ligand interaction (with special attention to allosteric regulation), hydrodynamic properties of macromolecules and quantitative aspects of intermolecular interactions that stabilize protein structure and protein-ligand complexes. Nearly one third of the course material is drawn from primary literature and the rest from two textbooks, ‘Biophysical Chemistry’ by Cantor and Schimmel and ‘Physical Chemistry: Principles and Applications to Biological Sciences’ by Tinoco, Sauer, Wang and Puglisi.
Course offered Spring Semester - Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:30-11:45am
Course Syllabus (PDF)
CHM 634: Biochemistry: Structural Aspects
CHM 634 is a three-credit course that covers concepts such as the basics of molecular biology techniques (including PCR, cloning, and restriction digestion), protein preparation (clone, express, and purify a protein), basic bioinformatics techniques (sequence alignment) and 3D-structure analysis of a protein or RNA molecule using Pymol.
Course offered Fall Semester - Monday, Wednesdays & Fridays, 10:30-11:20am
Course Syllabus (PDF)
Training Program Involvement
Chitta is a preceptor in two NIH T32 training programs at Purdue:
Journal Club Series
As part of being a preceptor in the NIH-T32 funded Molecular Biophysics Training Program, Chitta holds a journal club for the fellowship trainees wherein members discuss literature published by the guest speakers invited to the program's “Frontiers in Biophysics” seminar series. Chitta encourage students to invite scholars that they want to get to know better and learn more from with regards to the techniques they employ in the lab. As a result, this seminar series have a stellar list of invited speakers. Chitta has developed a rubric to base the journal club discussion such that it revolves around the trainees’ understanding of different biophysical techniques that are presented.