[biomiracle]

Hello!

I am a rising sophomore with double major in a microbiology and a chemistry.  For the upcoming Fall semester, I will be taking the intermediate organic chemistry and the organic chemistry lab.  Yesterday, I found that I can take the first semester of the year-long introductory biochemistry course.  Is it advisable to take both organic chemistry and biochemistry at the same time?  If I study for the organic chemistry over this summer, will this be okay to take the biochemistry?

[Arkcon]

It really depends on your university's curriculum, some try to avoid student's taking intensive courses in the same semester.  However, it is really up to you and your study habits.  As I recall, even though biochemistry is supposed to be built heavily on organic chemistry, it really isn't greatly concerned with advanced organic chemistry concepts.  Of course, biochemistry reactions are mostly based around organic molecules.  But the most advanced concept, off the top of my head, is that some enzymatic reactions proceed by a Shiff's base mechanism.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiff_base#Biochemistry  And even that example I had to Google for.  See is someone else on this board can provide another example.

[Babcock_Hall]

In biochemistry, you will see a number of functional groups, esters, amides, ketones, aldehydes, etc.  If you don't know what they are (and generally they are emphasized in the second semester of organic chemistry), then I think biochemistry will be more difficult.

[kriggy]

I think it depends on how much time you are willing to put into those classes. I had ochem 2 and biochem together last year and it was doable. The biochemistry course was realy basic introduction into metabolisms - glycolysis, krebs cycle,beta-oxidation etc.. and structure of biomacromolecules. It basicaly didnt require any knowledge of o-chem except basic high-school stuff.
I would say go for it it but again, depends on how much time you are willing to spend on those subjects.

[Yggdrasil]

I found taking organic chemistry before taking biochemistry to be helpful.  In particular, when learning the reactions in the central metabolic pathways (glycolysis, krebs cycle, etc), I found my o-chem knowledge to be helpful because I could understand the particular reactions better (e.g. oh, that step is just an aldol reaction that I learned about in o-chem).  Of course, it's easy enough to learn about these metabolic pathways without o-chem, but I feel students who have taken a semester or two of o-chem prior to biochem will get more out of the class. 

Perhaps if you will not specialize in biochemistry and just need it as a prerequisite to take other classes that you're more interested in, it's best to take it as early as possible.  But, if you plan on specializing in biochemistry or want to learn it in greater detail, you may benefit from taking organic chemistry first.