Dr. Tang is definitely trying his best to teach us biology, and he definitely cares about the subject matter. While I personally enjoyed his class, and found the subject matter interesting, many, if not most of my classmates tended to dread and/or hate the class. Unless you took AP Bio, are genuinely interested in biology, and you have a VERY thorough background in molecular biology, be prepared to drink water out of a firehose.

You're assigned 50-80 pages of reading per week. Much of the material in the book won't even show up on exams, but it might. While Dr. Tang doesn't require the reading, you have to read it to not be lost in lecture. Also, the lectures are 2 hours long of dense material. Again, I didn't hate them, and honestly enjoyed them, but the majority of my classmates couldn't wait for them to be over. Lectures are not mandatory, but you have to go to them to do well; otherwise, you won't know what's important in the book and what isn't.

By the way, DISCUSSIONS ARE MANDATORY, which are very hit-and-miss.

The exams were difficult. There's too much stuff to memorize; the exams had many oddly specific questions. Even if you memorized the slides, some questions will be hard. Even worse, you're dead in the water for the math-based questions. Dr. Tang gave us absolutely no practice for the math-based questions. You simply have to hope that the TAs covered the mathematical questions well enough during review sessions.

The projects were busy work at the best. They were mindlessly following instructions on a worksheet with 3 friends. Even if you divided the work, the 3 projects took hours to complete.

I actually enjoyed the subject material and the lectures, although I am in the minority. That said, I'm glad that this class is done and over. It felt like drinking out of a firehose. Not just that, but the exams had questions that a student couldn't be expected to answer, even if he/she had notes and the internet.

By the way, the class is definitely curved, but in your favor. I got an average of 85% on the exams and 95% on the projects and still received an A.

There's no avoiding Tang, so just take the class whenever you can/feel like it.

This class was just a lot of content I was not prepared for. Given the fact that I have not taken biology since freshman year of high school, this class hit the ground running. Had this class not been held at 8am, I would have attended more. I like how professor Tang utilized the white board and was more engaging. The homeworks with the online programs was time consuming and difficult because it was not clear what the expectations were for our final submission. The homework guides were extremely helpful to complete them though. The tests were difficult for me personally as they asked for specific details, which were hard to remember or ensure that you had them on your cheat sheet due the large amount of material once again.

TAs: The discussions just reused the lecture slides rather than reviewing or summarizing the content and explaining the mechanisms more in depth.

Took this class in winter 2020 and got an A+ without much work by using a few tricks and tips. This class is very boring even for someone who is in the biochemical core, but at least getting a good grade is possible. Overall Tang will say it is better to learn the core concepts, however as the quarter goes on you just need to do more and more memorizing (memorize all the slides for the test).
Grading:
Mid 1 20%
Mid 2 20%
Final 20%
HW 1 12% (Uses a protein software)
HW 2 8% (Based on metabolism and pathways)
HW 3 10% (Based on CRISPR)
Discussion Attendance 10%

All the test are non-cumulative meaning they only cover 3 weeks of material which is very nice. You do not need to buy or ever read the textbook to do well in this class. The homework assignments are very easy and you can work in groups of up to 4 so the workload per person is very low, Each assignment should take a max of 4-6 hours and considering you have 3 weeks for each assignment that is a very light load. Here is how to do well:
1. Go to every discussion you do not have to even talk just make sure you sign in to get the free points.
2. HW is due the same week as midterms when your knowledge is the highest, so right before the due date reread your HW and you will find some small errors to correct. Even not so good work will get full credit you only need like 2 solid sentences to each problem to get full credit so don't waste time making something fancy just be correct in what you say. But, start the HW the week before so you are not studying and doing the HW at the same time.
3. Go to ever lecture and take notes by hand in a notebook. This forces you to pay attention and see the material for the first time. Even if you never reread your notes, cause I never do, it will at least be a first look a material
4. 2 days before the test start re-reading and take notes on all the lecture slides. I would only study 4 hours two days before and 6 hours the day before, this is material prefect for cramming (I don't remember anything now though).
5. Understand the math deviations he does in class, it is all basic algebra but both midterms will ask for the deviations in the free response. The rest of the test in multiple choice so is easier.
6. I end with a raw score of 93.8% in the class and was curved to an A+ so a small curve at the end will benefit you.

Pretty simple class overall. No need to read the textbook at all, only the slides as that is what is tested on. I saw some other review saying that the reading assignment is too much but you really don't have to do it. I only read the slides and never encountered a question that wasn't in the slides. The group projects are straightforward, just start them early. Overall worst part of this class was that I attended lectures just to play on my phone and sleep, I would have done the same in the class had I just skipped lecture and read the slides on my own.

ChemE 45 is one of the most challenging courses I have ever taken. It replaces the life science GE that other majors have to take, but the difficulty level in no way matches a GE. From what I understand, ChemE 45 is a class that makes it so that ChemEs no longer have to take three separate life science courses. It oftentimes felt this way, because every lecture seemed like an information dump. I remember walking into class one day and seeing that Tang was covering Chapters 8, 24, and 25 all in one lecture, which amounted to about 100 pages of material in the textbook. I get that this is college, and hand-holding is no longer a thing, but this class made AP Bio look like an absolute cakewalk. Many of us zoned out during the lectures because the material could get somewhat dry at times if you weren't all that interested in bio. This isn't Tang's fault, though. Considering the sheer amount of material that Tang had to cover in 10 weeks, I think that he did a decent job and that he tried his best in getting all of us to love biology. At the end of the day, however, he wasn't able to convert all of us. Overall, I think the class is pretty doable if you focus on understanding (rather than solely memorizing) the material. This will help you gain the extra points needed to score above a majority of the class. On all the exams, the standard deviation was pretty small, so note that a few extra points can go a long way in differentiating yourself from the rest of the pack. In order to get an A, try to score near the top of the class on two out of three of the exams (you can afford to score about average on one of them). My raw score was about 89%, and it was enough for an A.

This is a very new ChemE class--I believe it replaces around 3 other classes, so that's nice. I had a hard time finding ANYTHING out about this class, so I've decided to put up a review to change that.

If I could rename this class it would be "DNA, Protein, and Enzyme Engineering." The course is broken up into three parts--the first deals with learning the mechanics and structure of proteins, the second is about enzymes and thermodynamics (light, baby-thermo, nothing scary) in biology, the last is about DNA and modern-day engineering. It's a very "story-time" like class. There's no real hard-engineering. No hardcore derivations, multi-page problems, mass/energy balances, systems design, etc. But that's pretty obvious, considering it's a bio course.

You essentially have three jobs in this course: read the book (or just go to lecture) and study for tests, go to mandatory discussion, do the homework. Tests are each 23% (even the final) and are restricted to the phase of the course--there's no cumulative tests at all. Homework involves a pretty dope biomolecular modeling program called JMOL and answering some questions about some proteins and enzymes you download from a library. HW is easy, lasting 2-4 hrs work time and there's only three in the entire quarter (7% grade per HW). You can even work in groups of 4 for them!

The material is not hard. It's really about creating a "story" of what is happening at the molecular level. The class isn't meant to give you a hard time--just show some mild interest in the course and you'll be fine--I'd say you have to try to actually fail this class. Exams averaged about ~75-80% and there is a curve. Lecture is fairly important as some free-response questions would be almost impossible to answer if you were just going off of Tang's slides that he posts. You had to derive one equilibrium equation, for example, which wasn't on the slides that we devoted half a lecture to.

Overall, I personally liked this course. DNA is incredibly fascinating and I ended up appreciating the bio-chemical engineering field enough to want to start researching a bit in it. It's an interesting class and I'd rate it 9/10 in terms of enjoyability and 5/10 in terms of difficulty. Tang is a solid lecturer and is pretty funny.