BIOL 331Advanced Cell Biology

55% liked it14% easy85% useful

From 38 ratings and 14 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• The course was fairly straightforward. You just had to memorize and understand the content on the slides and repeat the information on the term test and exam, no trick questions. Most of the content was a repeat of BIOL 130 which made it a bit boring. Similarly, the lab was also a bit boring. On paper, the experiments were relevant, but when done in-person, they did not work out in the end, and they had very long wait times. I think the only interesting thing about the lab was the western blot.

  May 2023 · liked it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• This course is exhaustingly difficult and the lab is joyless exercise of patience. Moira Glerum tries really hard to teach the material clearly and is great with help outside the class. The lecture material is 90% mechanism/theory but the exams/midterms largely test your ability to derive experiments to show xyz thing is happening in the cell (hint: the answer is invariably GFP related). In spite of the capacious cranial space, time and effort required to appreciate the material, the course is a curation of all the essential cellular biology you'll need to work in an advanced research lab. Very difficult, Very useful

  Aug 2014 · liked it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• This course is very difficult. This course expects you to really know your stuff. Impossible to get multiple choice correct unless you understand all of the content, and the application questions also require you to really know the content. And there is a lot of it! So much content! The course, overall, really tests your ability to design simple experiments to test hypotheses. I would say the worst part of the whole course is the lab. It's very disorganized and boring (groups of 8 working on a single western blot).

  May 2019 · liked it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• A lot of content. Keep up and actually read the textbook.

  Apr 2015 · liked it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• Very useful course, but incredibly difficult with the sheer amount of content which isn't very interconnected. The course itself would be fine, but it also has a lab component which really adds nothing to the course content itself. This would be fine if it was enjoyable or at least brought up your average from the course, but its very clear the resources are not present, and you'll spend a majority of your 3 hours just waiting for the 1 shared centrifuge shared amongst the whole class, alongside TAs which look like they would rather jump out the window than answer a simple question (which they often were unable to do when asked).

  Apr 2026 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this