Core modules
Year One
You will be taught by active research scientists with international reputations, who will help you to think creatively and quantitatively, formulate problems, and work effectively to solve them by drawing freely on the methods and mind sets of different scientific disciplines. Laboratory experimental work in small teams begins right from the outset, with parallel classroom sessions to teach you relevant scientific concepts and methods, ranging across multiple disciplines.
Years Two and Three
The Integrated Science approach continues for your cohort, running alongside a more in-depth look at the molecular and cellular basis of life in modules taught by the School of Life Sciences. Core modules include enzymology, protein structure/function, structural molecular biology, and tools for discovery. In both years two and three, these are combined with optional modules chosen from an extensive menu, including the possibility to take courses outside of WMS and School of Life Sciences.
Year Four
You will focus primarily on lab-based experimental research, pursuing your own project, and will write a Master’s thesis. Alongside this, you will choose a number of optional modules in subjects, including essential and transferable research skills, frontier techniques in biomedical research, mathematical modelling of biomedical systems, and programming for biomedical data analysis.
Important information
We are planning to make some exciting changes to our Integrated Natural Sciences (MSci) degree for 2025/26 entry. We continually review our curricula to reflect developments in the relevant disciplines to deliver the best educational experience, integrating transferable and employability skills through our degrees to improve our graduate outcomes. The core and optional modules will undergo approval through the University's rigorous academic processes. As modules are approved, we will update the course information on this webpage. It is therefore very important that you check this webpage for the latest information before you apply and prior to accepting an offer. Sign up to receive updates.
Year One
You’ll study this module as an essential foundation for many of the modules that will follow on the course. We will equip you with the essential core skills in molecular biology and scientific computing, bringing you up to speed with the course philosophy.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
This module aims to equip you with the conceptual, theoretical and computational skills required for the analysis and engineering of atomic and molecular systems, with an emphasis on biomolecules. You’ll explore the molecules of life, looking at the physics that holds them together, the chemistry by which they react in watery solution and at their structures, motions and reactivities. Looking at self-organisation, you’ll also discuss the very important phenomenon for all living matter: how to generate large scale and defined structures out of a bunch of individual proteins. As part of this module, you will focus on revising and extending your A Level skills in Mathematics to support with plotting and fitting data.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
This module aims to equip you with the conceptual, theoretical and computational skills required for the analysis and engineering of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organelles and cells. Starting with understanding the principles of light, you’ll also learn how life harnesses electrical forces to communicate and compute information. As the module progresses, you’ll explore chemical and synthetic biology, principally examining biology as macromolecular chemistry and how we can use chemistry to make biological probes. We conclude this module with cell division and underpin the principles of just how does one cell become two?
This module aims to equip you with the conceptual, computational and practical skills required for the analysis and engineering of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms and their development. You’ll begin with development and unpick a key question in development of life: how are embryos organised? You’ll then move on to immunity, looking at the mechanisms and mathematics of the immune response, considering how do organisms recognise non-self. We’ll finish this module by covering pathogens and parasites and you’ll dissect how parasites have evolved to invade our bodies.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Year Two
Building on your experience from Year 1, you’ll use mathematical and computational approaches to understand how cells can make decisions. We focus on different forms of feedback, to explain how, for example, cells can display switch-like behaviour. We finish by applying to developmental patterning.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
Using more advanced methods and analysis, you’ll analyse data, model interactions and spatial patterns and link changes at the DNA and transcriptional level to outcomes in spatial developmental patterns, species interaction and population ecology.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
This module focuses on developing your knowledge of how to plan and implement biological experiments. Through a range of practicals and computing sessions, you will enhance your experimental skills and statistical knowledge. This will be utilised in your research projects in years three and four.
You will become familiar with the basic methods of studying enzymes, understand the mechanisms whereby enzymes are able to catalyse reactions and appreciate how individual reactions are controlled and integrated into the metabolic pathways of the cell.
Basic concepts of protein structure are built upon in order to understand the structure/function relationships of proteins in terms of the chemistry of their component amino acid residues.
On this module, you will examine the principles by which key techniques in the field of biochemical discovery provide biochemical information. This will involve you studying structural techniques such as X-ray, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and cryo-electron microscopy. As well as, biophysical and analytical techniques such as circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and fluorescence. In the second half of the course, you will widen your studies to analyse biological interactions through case studies, covering topics such as proteomics, high-resolution light microscopy, surface plasmon resonance, isothermal titration calorimetry and immunoprecipitation.
You will choose two of the following modules:
This module will introduce you to one of the fundamental processes that underpin modern biomedical science: immunology. It considers many disease processes and their mitigation; immunology deals with the basic processes of immunity to infection, but also covers aspect of hypersensitivity and auto-immune disease.
In this module you’ll have the opportunity to gain a scientific and interdisciplinary perspective of ecosystems and responses by habitats and species to disturbances cause by a variety of factors. Several major environmental issues are presented along with possible solutions to some of them, using concepts learned through case studies from across the world.
You will discover the complexity of the eukaryotic cell and its subcellular compartments. You will gain an overview of cell division and its underlying control process, the cell cycle, and how this responds to growth signals and death signals, resulting in cell proliferation and programmed cell death respectively.
You will be introduced to a range of important microparasites, the diseases they cause and the parasite-host and environmental interactions that govern their biology and approaches to control. Examples include vector-borne and/or zoonotic organisms from Mycobacterium, Trypanosomes, Plasmodium to fungi.
Neuropharmacology is the study of how chemical agents influence bodily functions in both health and disease, and indeed how the body deals with these chemicals. The module will concentrate on the use of drug-based therapeutics in a range of human diseases and will bridge the gap between basic cell signalling, biochemistry and the complex patho-physiology and treatment of the diseases.
This physiology module provides an overview of neurobiology and includes an introduction to the physiology of the nervous system and detailed analysis of the cell and molecular biology underlying the development and functions of the nervous system.
This module provides you with a foundation for the further study of endocrinology at the cellular and molecular level and a firm basis for understanding normal hormonal control.
Year Three
This module focuses on developing your knowledge of how to plan and implement biological experiments. Through a range of practicals and computing sessions, you will enhance your experimental skills and statistical knowledge. This will be utilised in your research projects in years three and four.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
In this module, you’ll have the opportunity to utilise the research and evaluation skills developed through Years One and Two to produce a substantial piece of research. Ordinarily, you’ll join a WMS research lab and be supervised by the lab head. You’ll get to choose and conduct a research project using an integrated natural sciences approach to address a specific research question. You’ll read and appraise relevant literature, acquire, analyse and interpret data and produce a thesis and oral presentation summarising your findings.
The study of non-autonomous dynamical systems can shed new light on biological systems. On this module, you will learn how our understanding of cells and cellular pathways can be enhanced by considering them as entities that can change their behaviour both in space and time.
You will choose two of the following modules:
This module allows third year students, who have a substantial background in molecular and cell biology from previous modules, to apply this knowledge to a research area (protein targeting) which is a field of fundamental importance in cell biology.
This module aims to give students both an overview of cancer and also a more detailed understanding of specific aspects of its underlying causes and its clinical management.
The module focuses on molecular mechanisms by which the immune system protects the host from infectious agents. Apart from presenting key components of the immune system, insight is provided into the strategies invading pathogens use to counteract the host defence. Frequently, these result in failure of pathogen elimination and in diseases due to loss of immunological control.
It is becoming ever more apparent that to completely understand a protein’s biological mechanism, three-dimensional structural information is essential. On this module, you will have the opportunity to explore and apply modern approaches and practical techniques to the study of biological macromolecules, building on your previous study of biophysical techniques and protein structures. You will pay particular attention to the structural techniques used to elucidate fundamental aspects and problems in biology-specific fields of interest in structural biology, including protein-nucleic acid interactions, protein–ligand interactions, protein folding and structure, macromolecular structures and biophysics.
This module allows students to bring their extensive background in molecular biology to bear on a complex and wide ranging topic which crosses phylum boundaries, is largely new to them, and which is one of the department’s areas of research expertise.
By considering the important cellular components of the central nervous system this modules illustrates current knowledge of how these determine and contribute to the integrative function of the nervous system.
Developmental biology is the study of molecular processes underlying the development of organisms from the fertilised egg to a fully-grown individual. Most of the molecular pathways involved are shared across all animals due to our common evolutionary history. The module is aimed at opening the student's understanding of how these pathways work at the genetic level, and how this translates into organismal phenotypes that can be understood in biomedical, evolutionary, and ecological/environmental contexts.
The concept of “one world living” has stimulated a demand for sustainable feedstocks and resources for a range of industrial applications. Economic and government policies have generated a market for “first generation” biofuels, however, there are growing public concerns that the crops used as feedstock for these fuels are utilising land mass more suited for food production and are therefore not truly sustainable. The development of a truly sustainable “second generation” biofuel is ongoing and there is increasing interest to exploit plants as feedstock’s for other industrial applications via the development of bio-refineries. There is a need to take account of ethics and increasing competition for land use for different purposes in order to develop a sustainable future in which biologically based technologies will play an important role.
The aim of this module is to enable students to make the transition from textbook driven learning to cutting edge science represented in primary literature. This will be achieved in a fast evolving, highly topical subject, which is extreme biology. The subject is notable for integrating all levels of biological organisation.
Synthetic biology is having a major impact on the development of applications in biotechnology, medicine, agriculture and energy, and accordingly brings academic and industrial interests together. We have therefore decided to incorporate contributions from representatives of some of our industrial partners into this module so that you can hear about commercially oriented research ‘first-hand’. Overall, this course will suit students who are interested in cutting edge science and who are keen to understand what the alternative (but related) paths of research in academia and industry might offer them in the future.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Year Four
This module aims to enable you to perform original high-quality research at the forefront of a field and be exposed to a cutting-edge research environment. It aims to develop your ability to produce and communicate a substantial, independent piece of work drawing on skills from at least two disciplines.
You will choose a total of 30 credits/CATs from the following modules:
The module intends to develop research and professional transferable skills that future employers will look for whether in academia, industry or other professional settings. The module will develop students' analytical and critical skills and provide training on various topics including managing of research progress, data collection, analysis and presentation; managing time, resources and people; scientific technical and non-technical writing.
The module intends to expose students to cutting edge scientific techniques and methodologies that are the interface of biology, engineering, chemistry and computer sciences; and develop students’ knowledge of their applications.
This module aims to:
- Provide a physical science perspective on cellular biology. The module explores the basic physical concepts underlying the behaviour of biomolecules, dynamic cell processes, cellular structure and signalling events.
- Equip postgraduate students with the intellectual tools necessary for a research career at the interface of biology and physics. Students will learn how to estimate sizes, speed and energy requirements for a variety of biological processes and build simple explicit models to fit experimental data from cell biology experiments.
- Provide students with opportunities to problem solve, and to work in groups.
Mathematical models play a central role in understanding mechanisms underpinning a wide range of biological systems. These models are used for the analysis and interpretation of large and varied biological data, but also for the prediction of the dynamic behaviour of these biological processes.
The module aims to:
- Equip students with mathematical and computational methods/tools (e.g.; MATLAB and/or similar software) for analysing, modelling and
predicting dynamic systems essentially related to biochemical problems.
- To unable students to develop their problem-solving skills in particular areas of biomedical research, working in group.
- Equip students with analytical skills by developing biomedical systems models from experimental data.
Computer programming is increasingly essential to the study of all aspects of biology. It is now required for accessing and managing data or performing statistical analyses. This module intends to provide advanced programming skills for students to solve biomedical problems. The module teaching format will take an active learning, student-centered approach. Classes will consist of introductions to programming techniques and associated biological problems, followed by hands-on exercises.
In summary, this module prepares students for data-intensive research in the biomedical area by teaching data analysis methodology, decision making and computer programming to enable students to become less constrained by limitations of pre-existing computational skills.
Optional modules
Please see above for optional module details.
