Dr. Sagasti was wonderful in teaching this class. The class structure involves reading a paper on developmental bio on your own, and then he goes over it in class. His lectures are made with great detail and explanations for every step of each process covered. He also encouraged students to interrupt him with any and all questions, making the learning process very amenable to all the students' needs. (Also, the papers have a lot of colorful pictures, so it's really not a drag at all.) You get as much out of this class as you put in, so as long as you pay attention and ask questions for anything you don't understand, Dr. Sagasti will do just about everything he can to make sure you get a good grade and are prepared for more involved MDCB upper divs.

Professor Sagasti is a great professor and made this class worthwhile. I have heard of other people taking this class and complaining about their professors. If you have to take this class, make sure you take it with Professor Sagasti. I have absolutely no complaints about this class; the material was straightforward and I felt that I actually learned valuable information in this class.

I really liked him!! he was so nice and super helpful when asked. His lectures were very engaging and interesting when they were in person. This class ( and major) is very research paper based but in his lectures he breaks it down so you can comprehend it which is superrrr helpful. His tests were the best- take home over a period of days and the information was very easy to figure out - just need to connect what you learned in the class to the question. Only bad things: 1)the weekly quizzes were kinda dense for the short period of time they give us so they were kind of hard 2)i wish there were more opportunities for points in the class ( final, 2 mtds, and weekly quizzes were what made up the pts ) WOULD TOTALLY TAKE ANOTHER CLASS W HIM but this is the only one he teaches :(

Professor Sagasti is the best MCDB professor I've ever had at UCLA. You will learn so much in this class and he teaches in a way that is based on critical thinking and application instead of memorization. His exams were actually enjoyable to take (as crazy as it sounds) because he gives you so much time to take them and they apply your knowledge really well. This class made me feel like a real scientist. HIGHLY recommend!!

Great professor! There is a lot of materials covered for this class but each of these topics were relevant and useful to know for Cell Biology. The class consists of weekly quizzes (w one drop), two midterms, and one final. Since I took the class remotely, the quizzes were timed for 30 minutes and held during discussions. Scientific papers are the main course materials for this course along with some background methods/cell biology. You will get a weekly reading of a scientific paper and he will go over the main points during the lecture. The questions were both conceptual and experimental. I think this class could be a little challenging in comparison to normal biology classes as you have to be able to apply the acquired concepts to critically analyze the given figures in the exams/quizzes. You also have to know how to identify the appropriate methods in questions with given circumstances. Therefore, the tested materials are not just mere memorization but applying the acquired concepts. There may be curves but it depends on the class's overall performance. I truly think I learned a lot in this class and definitely will recommend this class to develop skills to analyze scientific papers in the future.

I am a fourth year biochemistry major who took this class as an upper division elective, so to me, this class wasn’t hard. But I definitely feel like this class would have been a lot harder if it was my first upper div or if I didn’t have a lot of lab experience. The class was curved upward because I ended up with a 91% in the class but still got an A. My midterm grades were 48/50 (96%) and 60/70 (86%). On the second midterm, the average was around 77% so Sagasti said that an 85% or above was an A. I got 63/70 (90%) on the final and 97% as my quiz grade. You have 6 quizzes in this class which test you on each paper you read for this class. I never went to lecture, however I was really good about watching the bruincasts and writing down basically everything he said. Discussion sections aren’t mandatory but I went to the sections where the TA would go over the most recent paper. Even if you don’t have time to read the paper beforehand, you should record the section so you can reference it when it’s time to know the paper for the quiz and for the exam. It’s really important that you understand the figures in the paper if you want to do well on the exams. Go to office hours if you have questions about what each figure is asking/showing. Overall, I’m glad I took this class and it wasn’t too difficult in my opinion. Just write down everything he says (sometimes the answers to exams are literally little asides he adds during lecture) and make sure you understand all the figures from the papers that you’re being tested on. As for the professor, he’s really nice and gives really engaging lectures, which I appreciated.

Dr. Sagasti is definitely very knowledgeable and he doesn't just give you the answer when you ask a question. He can go pretty fast during lectures, but office hours were definitely super helpful. However, this class definitely covered a ton of material so the final was very long. He likes to ask "make your own experiment" type questions so you need to know all the experimental techniques and how to analyze results. I was lacking in that area -- though I knew the techniques and results I would want, it was hard to put into the concise words that he wanted. Overall, learned a ton in this class.

Great class for any MCDB major. He really gives you all the tools you need for later classes. The class is set up so that you start outside the cell, learn all the techniques of microscopy, then the plasma membrane, and the cytoplasm. (although we never talked about the nucleus in depth, which is probably for another class). The papers you read in this class really challenged a lot of knowledge I had acquired in previous classes. What I mean is that this class really goes in depth on things that you thought were simple, but were actually not how they seem. Anyways, the teacher is amazing. It is Bruincasted, which helped a lot. And the class was straight scaled. Study the lecture slides for the multiple choice, know the papers well for the free response questions.

I really loved taking Cell Bio with Sagasti. Though he can speak really fast sometimes, his lectures are very passionate and detailed in a way that always made me excited about the material we were learning. He assigns a few scientific papers to read throughout the quarter, which is really daunting at first, but the TAs help you through it in discussion and it helped me become a lot more comfortable with primary literature. Questions from these papers make up the bulk of the short answer part of exams, so really know how to interpret the figures in each paper. The main helpful tip I can give about the exams is don't overcomplicate it - if the question seems too simple, it really is that simple. He's not trying to trick you, and you don't want to get points taken off because you rambled, especially if you knew the simple answer to the simple question he was asking.

Don't bother buying the textbook, I never touched it once. The lectures are bruincasted which is super helpful, especially because he can talk really fast. The exams are mostly based off the papers like I said, but there is also a multiple choice part of the tests that comes from lecture material. Make sure you understand the lecture concepts because these are easy points on the exam.

I never went to Sagasti's office hours, but my TA Raquel Aragon was super amazingly helpful during her office hours and in discussion. 10/10 take her as your TA if you have the option. This class was my first upper div in the major and it definitely convinced me that I made the right choice by majoring in MCDB!

Dr. Sagasti is a really, really nice guy! Just from taking this one class with him, it's clear how smart he is, too. While cell biology can be dense and boring, he does a great job making it as engaging as possible because he's so passionate about it. One difficult component is that you have to read 6 papers. Dr. Sagasti does a good job of explaining what the paper is about before we read it so we have background, and the TAs go over the figures in depth in section. This class is really straightforward, fair and interesting. Definitely recommend!