The Biology Program offers courses on the biological, chemical, physical, and mathematical principles governing the behavior of living matter at the molecular, cellular, organism, and population levels. Fundamental subjects such as molecular and cellular biology, genetics, physiology, microbiology, biochemistry, plant biology, and ecology are supplemented by a wide variety of elective courses to prepare the students for careers in research and teaching in university, and for various positions in food and drug industry, agriculture, forestry, and public health. The Biology program allows students to choose an option among molecular biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, and environmental biology fields in their junior year.

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Elective Courses

There are two types of elective courses in our program,

  1. Technical Elective (10 courses)

A MINIMUM of 4 of these 10 must be chosen from BIO or GENE programs.

A MAXIMUM of 6 technical electives may be chosen from other science and engineering departments of METU, in addition to BIO or GENE program courses. These include courses offered by the Departments of Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry, and Physics, as well as by the Faculty of Engineering and the Graduate Schools of Informatics or Marine Sciences.

  2. Nontechnical Elective (2 courses)

These include courses offered by the Art Departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (e.g., Psychology or Philosophy) and faculties or graduate schools OTHER THAN Engineering and Informatics.

At the Education Committee meeting held on Monday, February 3, 2025, and the Departmental Academic Board meeting held on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the following decision was made:

Students may take technical or non-technical elective courses as extra credits that are not located in the curriculum. However, these extra courses will not be included in calculating the cumulative GPA (cGPA). If students wish to replace an extra course with a previously taken course in the same category, they must make this replacement while adding the newly taken course during the course registration week. This decision will be effective for graduations starting from the Spring 2024-2025 semester.

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Course Lists and Prerequisites

Please visit the academic catalog for information on courses offered by the BIO and GENE programs of our department. For information on course prerequisites please click here.

The Special Project course (BIOL460) is only offered to 4th-year students with CPGA >2.75.