The course BIOSCI 101, (Life! Origins and mechanism) will introduce students to fundamental concepts of molecular biology and genetics that are essential to understanding life at a cellular level and the inheritance of genetic information. BIOSCI 101 is a core foundation course for later BIOSCI courses in the Aulin College Biotechnology programme that specialize in these areas. The course will be divided into two blocks. First, eight topics in cellular and molecular biology will cover the structure and organization of animal, plant and bacterial cells and the roles of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids in the basic functions of cells and processes essential for cellular life. Second, a further eight topics will cover genetics - the biological mechanisms by which the sequence of bases in DNA influence heritable traits passed from one generation to the next and how engineering of the DNA sequence of genes can be used to help people with genetic diseases and create new opportunity for biotechnology.