- Genetics

Catalog description

This course provides a detailed and up-to-date understanding of genetics, an appreciation of how genetics affects our lives every day from the supermarket to the doctor's office, and a realization of the applications of genetics to virtually every discipline of biology. We focus on three major areas of genetics: (1) Molecular genetics: Thinking about genetics on the DNA level - everything from DNA sequencing to mutagen testing. (2) Mendelian genetics: Thinking about genetics on the gene level-everything from inheritance to recombinational mapping. (3) The application of both molecular and Mendelian genetics to study biological processes. We start by seeing how genetic techniques can be used to dissect almost any biological process and end up answering questions such as: How does genetic disease screening work? How are genes cloned from complex organisms such as mice or even humans? How does gene therapy work? In the laboratory we carry out both molecular experiments and classical genetic experiments.