Developmental Genomics - BCH 512
Fall Semester 2009 - 2 credits
Registration # 040177
Course Coordinator: R.M.
Gronostajski rgron@buffalo.edu
Course guides:
Rich Gronostajski, Marc Halfon, Chris Campbell and others
Class Time/Location: Tuesdays and Thursdays
11:00AM-Noon
/ Downtown Campus COEBLS 1st floor B1-306
Course objective: Developmental
Genomics will focus on how the spatial and temporal readout of
the genome is achieved during development, and conversely on how
forced changes in gene expression patterns can affect developmental
processes. The philosophy of the course is that "Development
never ends" and thus examples of processes from normal or
pathological embryonic, adult and aging systems may be discussed.
Each session will focus on one or more fundamental principles
of developmental biology/genomics, using papers from the literature
to illustrate the principle(s). Every effort will be made to demystify
developmental biology and discuss state of the art experimental
approaches to address questions about the genes required for normal
development. While much teaching will be in the form of student
presentations from the primary literature, one hour introductions will
be given by the course guides on each topic in the Tuesday lecture. The
goal of
the course is to enable students to read papers in the areas of
developmental biology and genomics, to critically evaluate them,
and to propose experiments that will answer questions that are raised
in the paper.
Course structure and grading:
Introductory lectures on each topic will be
given on the Tuesday of each week and research papers will be discussed
in
detail on the Thursday of each session. Students will be responsible
for presenting
these papers to the class, with guidance from the course guides.
Unannounced quizzes may be given at the beginning of class on
the material in the paper(s) to be discussed in that class. Class
participation and discussions will be a key element of the course.
There will be no formal exams in the course and grading will be
based on a paper due during exam week (40%), presentation of the
proposed term paper in class (25%), class participation (25%), and
quiz grades (10%). The required paper will be a 3-5 page research
proposal based on one of the principles covered in the course
and will propose the next experiment, or series of experiments
that need to be done to address the issues raised in the paper.
If desired a student can choose a paper outside of the ones presented
in the class as long as it addresses one of the principles covered
in the course.