Use of Physical Chemistry

[foodchain]

Do you think physical chemistry is important to molecular biology? I think organic chemistry and biochemistry is important for such but I am thinking physical chemistry would also be helpful. Would that be enough education in say chemistry to study molecular issues in the life sciences like microbe ecology? Such as if you wanted to be able to independently study bioremediation via microbe behavior what education in chemistry would be sufficient?

[Entropy]

Physical chemistry can help with how you view the molecules moving. At least that's what it did for me. It also taught me the limits of equipment.

 

You might find the concepts taught in P-chem to be useful for developing different/better equipment for what you want to study.

[ecoli]

are you talking about understanding course material or for conducting research?

[foodchain]

are you talking about understanding course material or for conducting research?

 

I would think both?

 

Physical chemistry can help with how you view the molecules moving. At least that's what it did for me. It also taught me the limits of equipment.

 

You might find the concepts taught in P-chem to be useful for developing different/better equipment for what you want to study.

 

I just on my own reading various papers you always deal with structure or the mechanics of a compounds structure such as a protein. Well with say the behavior of bacteria if you wanted to study patterns of gene expression for some population that would also mean being able to understand the molecular basis in regards to the bacteria’s physiology right? So I just wonder if you actually need to understand the material in physical chemistry in order to actually identify a protein or a gene.

[Entropy]

Perhaps a course in biophysical chemistry might be more useful to you. Learning about how proteins fold and function seems to be what you are most interested in. That's a large part of what is covered. It doesn't require as much calculus (generally 1 semester at most) and you end up doing a fair amount of computer modeling.