BIOMG 6870 - Tricks of the Trade: How to Use Genetics to Dissect Cells, Molecules and Developmental Pathways

Spring. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: prior courses in genetics and genomics (such as BIOMG 2800), and in molecular biology (such as BIOMG 3300, BIOMG 3320, BIOMG 3330, BIOMG 3350, or equivalent). Prior course exposure to developmental biology and/or cell biology is helpful, but not required. Not offered every year.

M. Wolfner.

The explosion of new genetic/genomic methods, including the availability of genome sequences and CRISPR-based genome editing, provides new elegant tools and approaches with which to discover and dissect the pathways that mediate cell function, development, and other biological processes. This course presents and examines these approaches, with examples showing their use to determine the time/place/partners/actions of important genes. We focus primarily on multicellular organisms, including (but not only) model systems like fruit flies, nematodes, and mice. Lectures, class discussion, and problem sets are based on important papers in the current scientific literature, and some older “classics” where relevant.

Outcome 1: Possess a working knowledge of advanced genetic methods and logic that are used to work out and analyze biological pathways.

Outcome 2: Be familiar with, and able to interpret and analyze critically, the latest and “classic” ideas, results, papers and hypotheses in genetics through readings, problem sets, and lecture/discussion of scientific research papers.

Outcome 3: Be able to communicate orally or (briefly) in writing the ideas, results and concepts in advanced genetic analysis of gene function and pathways.

Outcome 4: Have made intellectual connections across the content of this course with information that you learned in other biology courses.