How to study for Medical School Biochemistry
Biochemistry in medical school is a condensed version of the biochemistry you may have taken in college. You won't be expected to memorize every enzyme, necessarily, in the Krebs cycle; however, for the purposes of exams, you will be expected to know the different key enzymes that are essential for each pathway to function. There is a much stronger emphasis on biochemical pathways and specific enzymes, substrates, and products that relate to distinct human diseases and how deficiency in any one of those things causes derangements in the others.
Steps to studying Biochemistry (in order)
Read through the lecture notes/lecture slides. Compare these to reliable review texts and textbooks.
Make a diagram
The pathways that you learn in each individual lecture will likely connect with the lecture before and after it. As such, you should be able to see how each pathway connects with the one you learned about before. A helpful, visual way to sort through the different pathways and see relationships is to draw them all out on a big piece of butcher paper. This will help you understand. Next to the pathways, pencil in the disease that occurs with deficiencies in certain as pects of that pathway.
Make a "facesheet" of the lecture's most pertinent points
It doesn't have to be complicated—just key concepts or points that are stressed in lecture or in the lecture notes.
Make flashcards
Use Anki to make a deck of flashcards that will quiz you on one-to-one associations. DO NOT make flashcards with lengthy answers.
Watch videos
There are a number of videos circulating, including the Kaplan video series, that will walk you through each concept and pathway. It can be hard to digest the material and understand the flow of it after, if you go to class, seeing it taught once. The videos can help supplement that repetition and make the concepts clearer.
What do I need to know for Biochemistry?
Know the enzyme deficiency or substrate/cofactor deficiency that occurs in every disease process taught
For example, in phenylketonuria, there is a deficiency in phenylalanine hydroxylase, the enzyme, or a decrease in tetrahydrobiopterin cofactor
That being said, know what enzymes/cofactors/substrates are needed to make "normal" products
For example, folate/THF and B12 are needed to make methionine and ribonucleotide reductase and thioredoxin reductase are needed to produce deoxynucleotides.
For any biochemical cycle, know the main substrate that enters the cycle and the enzyme that makes that substrate.
For example, in the urea cycle, carbamoyl phosphate enters the cycle and is made by carbamoyl phosphate synthetase I.
Know the modes of inheritance of biochemical disorders (autosomal recessive, dominant, X-linked...etc).
Memorize which ones are autosomal dominant, X-linked dominant/recessive, or mitochondria...the vast majority are autosomal recessive.