Introduction

Directed Research in Medical Chemistry and Structural Biology of Bioactive Compounds is a new Capstone course at William & Mary. This course is taught by Associate Professor Myriam Cotten from Applied Science with the purpose of giving students hands-on learning experiences in biochemistry and biophysics. During the first part of the semester, the students are learning purification and structural techniques such as High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Circular Dichroism, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. During the second part of the course, they investigate membrane-interacting peptides that have therapeutic properties.