Do not take this class. The class has too much work for a lab class. Additionally, the class was too focused on grading as opposed to learning. The professor was not accommodating at all to any special circumstances. The TA Wroocha specially bad. She was very condescending and had favorites. She took herself way too seriously. Like chill out . It's an undergraduate class. It's not that deep.

Took Winter 2021. Ridiculous workload. I would spend hours upon hours every week doing the lab write ups which were nitpicked by the TA. Idk if all the TAs we're as nitpicky as Keziah (she sounded like the hardest based on our class groupme) but you would lose points for the slightest of errors. Rubrics for the assignments were also vague making them hard to do and then they tell you common mistakes on assignments after you hand them in which is super unhelpful and unnecessarily stressful. Grading was also super slow. It wasn't until week 10 that ppls grades from week 5 were submitted making it hard to fix mistakes. During our weekly assignment quizzes, there was one question that literally 100% of the class got wrong and the prof didn't remove it. I will say that at least the prof and TAs are clear in the prerecorded lectures and lab time, but as I said before, they're incredibly vague when it comes to the rubric for things which are turned in.

Be prepared to do a LOT of work for this class. The lab notebooks, which are worth 40% of your grade, are due every week and can be kind of tedious to finish (depending on the experiments you conduct each week). For reference, there was a period where I was consistently writing 4000-5000 words for each lab notebook. The TAs can be kind of picky about them while grading, but nothing too unreasonable-- I always thought the feedback I received was fair and well thought out.

In the same vein, I feel like your TA can really make or break your experience in this class, since the majority of your time is spent in lab (4 hours/week) and since they are the ones who grade the lab notebooks. Get Nick (O'Connell) if you can, he was my favorite!! He's awesome at answering whatever questions you have, even if they're kind of stupid/basic, and he helped me understand how to apply the material from class really well. He's also really good at anticipating what mistakes you might make when conducting your experiments, which is the hallmark of a great TA in any class imo. Nick is also just a lovely person in general, and I didn't get the sense that he played favorites or anything like that, like another review mentioned for one of the other TAs. I seriously feel like I lucked out with him lol.

The other components of our grade were the weekly quizzes, weekly experimental plans, lab conduct, and lab safety training that you do before the quarter starts. I think the class structure has changed a lot from previous quarters, judging by previous reviews. We didn't have to write a midterm or final paper, just the final oral presentation at the end of the quarter, and we didn't work in groups. The weekly quizzes weren't too bad, as long as you focus on the "tricky" aspects of experiments that Professor Lee mentions in lecture, and the experimental plans were pretty brief and essentially graded on completion. The final oral presentation was 9-11 minutes over zoom with a Q&A component at the end, where the prof and TA ask you questions, and it was individual, meaning that the rest of the class didn't watch you present. Lab conduct was basically if you brought your lab coat to lab every week and wore safety goggles during the one week that we needed them. (Sidenote: if you haven't done the chem lab series yet, i.e. 14BL and 14CL, don't make the mistake I did and buy a white lab coat. Apparently the chem department requires blue ones for whatever reason, so in the future I'll have to go buy another one.)

The lectures were informative and easy to follow along with. Professor Lee strikes a good balance between conversational and scientific language, and I never felt like class was boring. I would characterize her as one of the younger, chill profs in personality (if that makes any sense), but she definitely expects the best from you, so try not to be late for class or procrastinate. With it being a small class, she gets to know everyone on an individual basis pretty well, which was nice. Lecture was sometimes audio recorded (no video), depending on if she could get the wifi to cooperate, but I feel like it was more worthwhile to just attend class anyways. The professor does office hours by appointment, and the TAs have drop-in OH.

Overall, I learned a lot in this class, and I'm glad I took it :)

The first part of the class, phylogenetic analysis of the unknown gene, is sort of difficult because the gene is previously uncharacterized and you have to justify its placement in a tree and how it relates to a homologous gene in another organism. Lectures aren't bruincasted, so you may have to harass your TAs in the lab for tips to get you started (But don't harass them too much, they're kind and one of the highlights of the course!) This was the first quarter that the class worked individually on the gene hybridization, but I preferred it that way because I got to learn each technique in more detail. The downside is that you have to do many of the steps yourself, including redoing PCR if it fails, remaking PCR products if you run out, etc. Be prepared to come in quite often outside of class, especially week 7-9. Make friends with your bench if you want to keep your sanity by having them help with failed steps. If you finish early, you can potentially be done with the class by the end of week 9, which is really nice.

I personally have some mixed feelings about this class, but I took it for the lab requirement and ended up doing well. Befriending your group is SO important, because you will depend on each other a lot for sharing data and breaking up the workload when you need to make up experiments. You will also be doing a presentation on an experiment together, as well as a final presentation with all your data, so working well together on that is necessary.
You 100% will be coming in on your own time to keep your project on schedule, so try to keep your non-lab afternoons open. Her quizzes were manageable if you studied, she loves lecture participation and will call on you if you're not participating enough, and the midterm paper is a beast to write but I don't think she graded my class's papers too harshly. She can be a little blunt when critiquing you, but she's a really engaging lecturer and I liked the way she explained things during class. This class was definitely tough and time-consuming, so maybe schedule it during one of your lighter quarters, but I don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be.

-one midterm paper, one group oral presentation, one group final presentation, weekly mini quizzes
-little bit of bioinformatics in the beginning and then all wet lab
*Take this class (besides getting lab credit) if you:
-want to get DIFFERENT types of research experience (I was in a research lab and I mostly did protein stuff but in 104AL, you do more of DNA/RNA stuff)
-want to experience the wet lab life (ie. 8+ hrs in lab/week)
*Don't take this class (yet) if you:
-have a busy schedule
-don't work well in a team (there is a lot of group work and communication within your team)
*Tips:
-know your team mates early on
-keep your non-lab days relatively free in the afternoon because if you fail experiments, its really helpful for you to come in and catch up
-communication!!
-read the manual before lab/class
-plan with your group esp. the last couple weeks