For those choose to take MCB 102 without the prerequisite of Bio 1A (e.g. my experience is that ChemEng students seem to think that they have to skip this prereq), or for people who had limited success in that course, here is a list of what you must know from the 7th (black with brown binding) edition of Campbell & Reece Biology.

I'll assume that you have the chemistry that is covered in chapters 1-4, though the influence of water on life in Ch 3 is interesting, and worth a read.

Read soon:
Chapter 5 introduces the four classes of biomolecules, and Bio 1A students will be thoroughly familiar with these.

The energetics of metabolism, the uses of ATP, and an introduction to enzymes are found in Ch 8. Enzymes and ATP come up in the second week of MCB102.

Ch 6 gives a description of cell parts and some of their functions. Lots of arcane vocabulary, some of which may be familiar if you had a good high school biology course (prokaryote/eukaryote for example). What's the thylakoid and why is it important?

Ch 7, Membrane structure and function, is the background for the lipids and membranes/membrane transport lectures in this course.

Read Ch 9 before we start Glycolysis, and 10 before the Electron Transport lecture. We will do little if any work with plant carbohydrate synthesis, but the electron transport chain in plants is an important part of MCB102.

Ch 11 is probably unnecessary, though we will cover some proteins that are involved in signaling.

I don't know if Ch 12 is necessary, but it might be useful background for you in general.

Ch 14 is cool but not necessary for this course. Ch 15 is borderline for this course. Ch 16 is impotant to read. We will see Chromosomes soon, but most of the DNA/RNA/protein stuff we will see in the last 2 weeks of the course, which is: Ch 17.

I don't feel strongly about Ch 18 for MCB102, except that gene expression control will be familiar to Bio 1A students.

Chapter 19 on eukaryotic genomes may be helpful.

Ch 20 contains restriction enzymes (which Bio 1A students will have used in lab) and their application, and other DNA technologies that are commonly in use today. This material is for the final lecture.