Study schedule

Three 2-hour sessions cover two lectures each, then Friday morning is a 20-minute review only. The schedule assumes the exam is in the usual 8:30 AM class slot on Fri, Oct 23.

Each session follows the same loop: read the section in this guide, skim that lecture's slides for anything the guide missed, then close the guide and explain the key mechanisms out loud. Finish with the practice questions for those lectures and check your answers.

Day	Lectures	Readings	Focus
Tue, Oct 20 (tonight)	7 GMOs, 8 Stem cells	Nobel Assembly	Gene expression is the thread that ties both together
Wed, Oct 21	9 Cultivated meat, 10 Organoids	Shapiro, Abbott	Same biology (cells in culture), same limits (oxygen, scale, maturity)
Thu, Oct 22	11 BCIs, 12 Recombinant DNA	Neuralink, Jacobsen	Then a full cumulative pass
Fri, Oct 23 (morning)	Review only	None	Night-before review section, 20 minutes max

Tue, Oct 20 — GMOs and stem cells

0:00–0:50 Lecture 7: breeding vs mutagenesis vs recombinant DNA vs CRISPR; transgenic vs cisgenic; RNAi; genotype × environment
0:50–1:40 Lecture 8 and the Nobel reading: potency levels, ESCs vs iPSCs, what Gurdon and Yamanaka each showed
1:40–2:00 Practice questions 1–6; write down anything you missed as a question for office hours

Wed, Oct 21 — Cultivated meat and organoids

Prof. Overbey's office hours are 11:00–12:30 today: bring last night's open questions
0:00–0:50 Lecture 9 and the Shapiro excerpts: production stages, media, bioreactors, scaffolds, scale-up
0:50–1:40 Lecture 10 and the Abbott reading: organoids vs 2D culture vs animal models, assembloids, limitations
1:40–2:00 Practice questions 7–12

Thu, Oct 22 — BCIs, recombinant DNA, cumulative pass

0:00–0:40 Lecture 11 and the Neuralink update: motor pathway, recording methods, decoding, control vs repair
0:40–1:15 Lecture 12 and the Jacobsen excerpts: restriction enzymes, ligase, plasmids, gain of function, BSL-1 to BSL-4
1:15–1:40 Commonly confused pairs table: cover the right column and explain each pair
1:40–2:00 Practice questions 13–18, then redo any you missed earlier in the week

Fri, Oct 23 — Exam morning

Read the night-before review section once, slowly; no new material

Tip: the ← and → arrow keys move between sections.