Postgraduate Course: Quantitating drug binding (PGBI11038)

Course Outline
School	School of Biological Sciences	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	10	ECTS Credits	5
Summary	In four practical sessions, students in will determine the binding constant of an agonist to rat-brain muscarinic acetylcholine receptor using a filter assay to measure bound receptor. Further sessions will derive the binding constants and total number of receptors from the data, including use of non-linear least squares fit to the hyperbola describing binding. This analysis will be used to determine variances for the parameters fitted and will lead to a critical examination of the design of the experiment. Other techniques for determining binding constants will be considered, with an emphasis on the appropriate windows in which they can be applied and on potential artefacts and pitfalls.
Course description	Lecture Outlines Week Title 1 Introduction 2 Setting the biological context 3 Practical - Day1 4 Practical - Day 2 5 Practical - Day 3 6 Data analysis 7 Practical Day 4 8 Fitting binding isotherms - practice 9 Fitting and evaluating different models for binding. 10 Formative Peer Assessment on Webfolios.

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: 29
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 6, Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 14, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 78 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	Extended Practical report - 100 %
Feedback	Not entered
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: acquire a deeper knowledge and critical appreciation of how binding constants for drug molecules to their targets are determined; find references and read into an academic subject given a starter reference; be competent to carry out the experimental manipulations to determine a binding constant of a drug to its target using a radioactive filter assay; understand how to derive a binding constant of a drug to its target and the stoichiometry; apply non-linear least squares methods to fit equations and to derive the variances in the parameters fitted.