my first lecture

The history of genetics starts a long way back with the male- and blood-centric views of the ancient Greeks. Mendel the father of genetics changed everything with an experimental and quantitative approach that led to his two laws. He published his famous paper in 1866, but it lay dormant until its rediscovery in 1900. In 1983, Barbara McClintock received a Nobel prize for her work on transposons. Just as Mendel was ahead of his time- so was McClintock. She stopped publishing her results for a long period because of the skepticism of other scientists. The Nobel prize came some 40 years after her initial findings. The prize was a vindication for her and a landmark for women, as she was the first female scientist to win the "physiology" Nobel outright.

My first lecture is about some of this history and then goes on to genome projects and technology. I have been very struck by so-called next generation sequencing. It is amazing creative technology and quite simply mind blowing. It is all heading towards the $1000 genome. Imagine what that can mean for medicine and more. Perhaps Dr. Farrell who will be giving the ethics component of this class will have some comments.

Finalization of my lecture plan

I am now quite excited by the outline of my lectures and how they relate to the three timelines- landmarks in genetics, technology developments, and Nobel prizes. The connections are interesting of course. I talked to colleagues and asked them what I had missed. Depending on their own expertise they suggested certain things. For example, Boveri from a cell biologist and 'one gene one enzyme' from a Neurospora expert. My yeast colleague and I were talking and I will add the genome-wide yeast knockout strain library- that's genomics and reverse genetics!

Jeff, who runs the microarray core in the Cancer Center has agreed to star in a movie I will make about the 'Solid' sequencer he operates. This is one of the next generation seqencers. They use it to sequence microRNAs so it will connect to the content on several levels. The students I teach in another class toured his facilty and were very impressed with the million dollar machine!

The use of genomics in forensics will be another thing I discuss. Mike who runs the sequencing center in my building has a kit, which is the same one that the FBI use, so he can profile people for alleles at 13 loci. I have asked him if he will come to class to profile some of our students. I'm waiting to hear back from him.

Planning the course

Venkat and I visited the Learning Collaboration Studio, where the videoconferences will be held. It is a really nice room in many ways. There is of course all the technology, which was surprisingly easy to use (we think). Venkat said we were 'Luddites' but Meghan, who runs the facility, assured us that we weren't. In fact I like it very much and am excited at the prospect of this new way (for me) to teach and learn. We called into a test conference and talked to a guy in Philadelphia, who was preparing for a conference later that day. It was a chance to practice with the cameras, sound etc. The podium computer has 'Smart' technology, which means you can turn your mouse into a pen and write on the PowerPoint slides. We practised writing neatly and I drew some Drosophila (fruit flies).

I am finalizing my lectures. The overarching title is Genetics and Genomics in the Analysis of Biological Problems. Three timelines (landmarks in genetics, techniques, and Nobel prizes) will set the backbone. Certain topics in the timeline will be expanded and I will discuss three 'case studies' in detail.