415/515 Immunology Principles and Practice

Objectives

Immunology Principles and Practice (MBI 415/515) is a 4 credit-hour lecture-laboratory course that will acquaint you with experimental laboratory techniques in addition to acquainting you with the molecules, cells and organs of the immune system.
The lecture portion of this course (3 credit hours) will acquaint you with the molecules, cells and organs of the immune system. You will learn about the structural features of the components of the immune system as well as their functions, but the primary emphasis of this course will be on the mechanisms involved in immune system development and responsiveness. The major experiments that allowed the elucidation of these mechanistic features will be featured to help you understand how immunologists think and work.
The laboratory portion of this course (1 credit hour) will provide a selective approach to your learning of certain immunologic techniques and assays. The field of immunology has continued to develop at a rapid pace during the latter years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century. Consequently, numerous assays and techniques are available to the professional immunologist. It would not be possible to incorporate all of these in any single course.

Graduate Students (MBI 515) must also actively participate in Immunology Journal Club, which will meet every week during the semester to discuss recently published papers in the professional literature of immunology.

Evaluation

Your lecture grade (75% of your course grade) will be determined by your performance on:

• Examinations (280 points):
  • MBI 415: You will take three 60-point interim examinations and one 100-point comprehensive final examination (60% over the last quarter of the term and 40% over the whole semester's material). These examinations will consist of multiple-choice, matching multiple-choice, true-false, short-answer essay, long-answer essay, and problem-solving questions. If you miss an examination (except the final) for a reason acceptable to me, you may take a long-answer essay and problem-solving question make-up examination within one week after the one you missed.
  • MBI 515: You will take three 60-point interim examinations and one 100-point comprehensive final examination (60% over the last quarter of the term and 40% over the whole semester's material). These examinations will consist of multiple-choice, matching multiple-choice, true-false, short-answer essay, long-answer essay, and problem-solving questions. If you miss an examination (except the final) for a reason acceptable to me, you may take a different long-answer essay and problem-solving question make-up examination within one week.
• Reports: You will earn the other 20 points by reading four primary research articles in the recent (published during the past 12 months) professional immunology literature and writing a one-page report (single-spaced, typed, 12 pt font, 1 inch margins) on each of them. You can turn in only one report per time segment of the course (as delineated by the examination periods) and each one must be relevant to the material discussed in class during that course segment. Each report consists of:
  • an explanation of the content (3.5 pt) of the article
  • an explanation of the relevance (1 pt) of the article to this course
  • the complete reference (0.5 pt) for the article, which consists of the author, date, title, source, and pages of the article) plus a photocopy of the first page (plus any other page that contains the abstract or summary) of the article.

Your laboratory grade (25% of your course grade) will be determined by your performance on:

• Examinations (60 points):
  • Exam 1 = 25 points
  • Exam 2 = 35 points
• Quizzes (10 points)
• Notebook assessments (20 points):
  • Assessment 1 = 7 points
  • Assessment 2 = 13 points
• Lab report (10 points)

Your laboratory instructor will determine your scores on your examinations, quizzes, notebook assessments and laboratory report. All reasonable efforts will be made to assure equality of grading among sections.

Plagiarism and other infractions of Miami University rules and regulations will be dealt with as described in the Miami University Handbook (pay particular attention Part V Academic Misconduct and especially to SECTION 01.502).

Your course grade will be determined using the following scale:

Cheating on any aspect of this course may make you subject to immediate dismissal from the class with a grade of F.