Advanced Topics in Developmental Biology

Catalog description

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with fundamental concepts and processes of metazoan development across major invertebrate and vertebrate model organisms with the primary emphasis on embryonic development. The course will further emphasize the physiological and molecular parallels in development between diverse species while highlighting significant differences and evolutionary advances on basic themes. The lectures will be based on a prescribed textbook while significant advances in the field will be communicated via discussion and student presentations of primary literature. Reading, interpreting and presenting experiments and results from primary research articles both historical and contemporary will be a major focus of the course and students will be required to present and discuss primary literature both orally and in writing. In addition to 3 exams, students will be required to write 2 short summaries on any two research papers discussed in class other than the ones they present orally. In these papers students will be expected to design logical follow up experiments to those presented in the papers to extend the hypothesis and scope of the work.