Eukaryotic Cell Biology

About this Course

About the Course

In this course, Professor Jake Baum (Imperial College London) introduces us to eukaryotic cells, that is animal and plant cells. To do this, we begin by: (i) asking what we are made of, and what scientists decades and centuries ago thought about this very same questions; before (ii) discussing how microscopy revolutionised our ability to understand ourselves to a much higher complexity; and then (iii) looking at the key players in cell biology, before beginning to understand the size and complexity of this field of science; which then follows onto (iv) cell compartmentalisation, and how this compartmentalisation enables the cell to carry out many different functions efficiently; and finally (v) looking at cell dynamism and seeing how this dynamism has enormous complexity but enables the most vital processes in our bodies such as growth and repair and cell division.

About the Lecturer

Jake Baum is a parasitologist, cell biologist and medical science innovator. Following a Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees at Oxford, and PhD in London (LSHTM, 2002) he moved to the Walter + Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia to work on the molecular and cellular biology of the malaria parasite. He started his own independent lab at the WEHI in 2010 (www.baumlab.com). In 2013, he returned to the UK to Imperial College London, and was later appointed Professor of Cell Biology and Infectious Diseases (2017). In 2020 he helped found the Imperial College Institute of Infection, a new Institute charged with representing the entire interdisciplinary research portfolio of infection research across the University. In 2022, he was recruited back to Australia to take up a tenured Professorship and position as Head of School of Medical Sciences at UNSW, Sydney. His lab has had a diverse range of interests, across cell biology, drug discovery, novel diagnostics, and vaccine technologies, often working together with industry partnerships.