Basic Cell Biology

This program aims to provide students with a strong foundation in fundamental cell biology and a solid base for further studies in the life sciences, clinical biology, biotechnology, and medicine. Specific objectives include creating stable human resources in life sciences by providing experience, skills, and competencies through effective learning. 

The program aims to establish a sustainable, multidisciplinary professional network of teaching scientists with shared interests in life sciences and medicine. It seeks to develop personal contacts between project members to facilitate joint dissemination and exploitation of teaching and learning results and applications for other collaborative projects. Lastly, the program aims to improve students' English skills, favouring their integration and future development within the scientific community and the CIVIS alliance.

The virtual mobility module covers the program’s theoretical part from November to January and combines face-to-face with asynchronous online sessions. 

The syllabus is divided into three knowledge blocks: 

1. Prokaryotic versus Eukaryotic Cells: Cytoplasm, Membranes, Cytoskeleton, 
2. Energy conversion: Mitochondria, Chloroplast 
3. Organelles and the Secretory Pathway: Endoplasmic Reticulum, Golgi Apparatus, Endocytosis, Vesicle Traffic 
4. Nucleus Organization and Cell Cycle: Chromosomes, Mitosis, Meiosis, Cell Cycle, Mechanisms of Cellular Death

Students will acquire knowledge of Cell Biology by establishing an interactive framework. The main learning objective is to comprehensively understand the structure and function of the cell and its organelles and familiarize with different basic techniques used in Cell Biology. At the end of this course, the students should be able to:

• Know and understand cell morphology, ultrastructure, function, cell cycle, and proliferation.
• Understand some of the technologies currently used in research in cellular biology.
• Work collaboratively, share responsibility/tasks, work in multidisciplinary teams.
• Clearly and effectively communicate scientific results.- Generate new scientific ideas, promote creativity and initiative.
• Read and solve problems.
• Self-evaluate and recognize the need for continuous personal improvement.
• Feel the need for continuous improvement and continuous learning, independently updating own knowledge.
• Search, analyse, interpret, evaluate information.

The physical mobility part will take place between 29 June - 3 July 2026 in Bucharest, Romania. The program is structured as follows:

Students will be divided into teams to investigate the differentiation of an immortalized adipocyte cell line. Each team, supervised by a teacher, will investigate different aspects of the differentiation process:

1. Analyzing Adipocyte differentiation. Two Teams (a and b) Team a: Differentiation visualization by lipid droplet staining. Microscopy, conventional and fluorescent. Team b. Differentiation Marker Expression – Perilipin expression through differentiation. Western Blot; Immunohistochemistry 
2. Analyzing Organellar Subcellular localization. Team a: Organelle observation with transfected fluorescent markers. Microscopy. Subcellular fractionation and Western blot. 
3. Cell cycle; Apoptosis, necrosis. Vital Colorant Staining. Western blot. The last day and a half will be devoted to summarizing and interpreting their results and preparing a presentation for the last day. Each team will explain the results in an open discussion, and all questions and doubts will be solved.

The virtual module will take place between 24th November 2025 -  16th January 2026. The structure of the online program is outlined below:

The virtual sessions will last 2 hours and take place between 17:00 - 19:00 CET:

• 24-28 November 2025: Prokaryotic versus Eukaryotic Cells: Cytoplasm, Membranes, Cytoskeleton
• 2-3 December 2025: Energy conversion: Mitochondria, Chloroplast 
• 5 December 2025: Introduction to Membrane Systems 
• 9-10 December 2025: Endoplasmic reticulum 
• 12, 16 December 2025: Golgi Apparatus and Endocytosis
• 18 December 2025: Membranes & Vesicle Traffic - Integration
• 6 January 2026: Interphase nucleus.  Chromosomes
• 8-9 January 2026: Mitosis/Meiosis
• 15-16 January 2026: Cell cycle signals and control

Students will be evaluated according to the criteria below:

For the virtual component:

A) Active contribution and assistance during the teaching process (20%)

B) Performance on activities and results on homework and classwork in teams or individually (50%)

C) Final exam containing multiple-choice, problems and essay (30%)

For the physical mobility evaluation:

A) Participation and performance during hands-on activities (70%)

B) Oral presentation of the project conducted in teams. (30%)

Motivation Letter

Level of english (According to CEFR)

We intend to select students with the best motivation to participate in this course and the best abilities to communicate with teachers and peers in each institution. Hence, participating students will be selected according to several criteria, which will include knowledge of English, the applicant’s motivation expressed by a motivation letter, and an interview.

The trainers -professors and scientists with extensive expertise in neuroscience, biochemistry (Mar Perez, UAM), embryology, diabetes (Laurence Ladriere, ULB), cancer biology (Sylvie Thuault, AMU), developmental biology, biochemistry (Juan Jose Arredondo), electrophysiology, neuropathology (Rivera Claudio) tumoral biology and electrophysiology (Dana Cucu and Florentina Piciu). All the trainers are cell biology experts and have long teaching experience.