Advanced Genetics Fall 2005

Syllabus

Lectures 9:10 am - 10:00 am M, W, F Gardner 2211

Video Viewing D.H. Hill Library Media Center 2305

Instructor Steven Spiker

           Office: 3530 Gardner

           e-mail: Steven_Spiker@ncsu.edu

           Phone: 515-5760

          Office Hours: M, W, F 10:00 am - 11 am (and by appointment)

Course Web Site http://vista.ncsu.edu

          (quizzes, assignments, handout pages, syllabus, quiz and test examples, etc.)

Textbook Essentials of Molecular Biology (4th ed.) 2003 Malacinski (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston & London).

Course Handouts Contains major handouts for the course. Download at course website.

Prerequisite Principles of Genetics (GN411) or equivalent (a course in biochemistry is desirable)

The Course This course is intended to give in-depth coverage of selected topics that are treated only briefly in survey courses like Principles of Genetics (GN411). Molecular genetics will be emphasized, although other topics will be treated as well. We will study biological macromolecules and their interactions, chromatin and chromosome structure, bacteria, viruses, plants, animals and fungi as genetic systems, transcription, RNA processing, the genetic code, translation, DNA replication, DNA and forensics, genetic transformation and cloning of plants and animals and recombinant DNA methodology.

The Course Objectives are as follows: Students will:

(1) Develop a conceptual framework of the make-up of genes and chromosomes and how the information in genes is expressed to control the characteristics of organisms.

(2) Gain an in-depth understanding of the scientific basis of many gene-based phenomena that have become a part of our everyday lives.

(3) Develop an understanding of how knowledge in genetics is based upon experiments and the interpretation of experimental results.

(4) Develop an understanding of how specific technologies have added to our understanding of how genes function.

The course will consist of three 50-minute lectures each week (with the exception of official University holidays). There will also be papers from the primary literature (i.e. not review papers) to read and a video to view. (See schedule below.) For exams and quizzes students will be responsible for all these materials. For most lectures, parallel and complementary material is presented in the textbook (Essentials of Molecular Biology) but all quiz and test questions will come from the lectures and the video.

Grading Grading will be on an A,B,C,D and F scale according to the box below. Note, the minimum score needed to earn any particular letter grade may be reduced, but not increased. The final exam will be comprehensive.

Determination of the Final Grade will be as follows:

Attendance Regular class attendance is expected and attendance will be monitored. Attendance is especially important in an advanced course, as much of the material covered will not be found in textbooks.

Policy on incomplete grades and missed exams or quizzes Documented illness or family emergency is required to make up quizzes and exams. The make up must generally be completed within one week of returning to classes. If the final exam is missed and cannot be made up before final grades are due in the Registrar's office, an incomplete grade will be assigned until the final exam is made up.

Academic honesty Tests are closed book and closed notes. Students are allowed to bring a calculator to tests with the understanding that the calculator contains no programs or notes that cover the material tested. Any academic dishonesty will be dealt with through the Office of Student Conduct. Advanced Genetics is being reorganized this semester and many things are changing. There will be more (but shorter) quizzes and the quizzes will be taken online. As of now, students are allowed to use textbooks and any notes they have while taking the quiz (i.e. "open book" quizzes), help from another person will be considered cheating.

Hints for success in the course Form study groups and get together at least once before each exam to test each other's understanding of the material and to learn from each other. You can learn a lot from your fellow students. You can teach them a lot also. Look at old quizzes and exams (on course web site) before the relevant lectures are given. In preparation for quizzes and exams, make sure you can answer and understand every question on the relevant old quizzes and exams. Make use of your instructor. He is here to help you. If you don't understand something, ask during or after class, during regular office hours or by appointment.

Term papers for GN513 Only students who have already earned a bachelors degree can be registered for GN513. In addition to the other materials, these students will be required to write a term paper. For the term paper these students choose (in consultation with the instructor) a primary, experimental scientific paper that has appeared within the last five years and which makes an exceptionally important contribution to genetics. The students will then read the paper and any other materials from other primary papers, review papers, books or textbooks that will enable them to understand the paper. In most cases, a substantial amount of additional reading will be necessary to fully understand how the experiments were carried out and interpreted. In the term paper the student should explain the major contributions the paper has made, what the background of knowledge in the area was before the paper was published, how data in the major figures and tables were obtained and interpreted. The term papers should be aimed at the students in Advanced Genetics. That is, the term paper should enable another student to readily understand a scientific paper that at first reading might appear to be difficult to understand. On the Home Page for GN413/513 in Vista is an example of a term paper written by a student last fall. A reading of this paper will give GN513 students a general idea of what is required in the term paper. As of now, the instructor plans on presenting one or two primary, experimental papers as lectures. These lecture presentations embody the spirit of what the instructor expects students to accomplish in the term papers. We advise GN513 students to note carefully how the following things are explained in the lectures: the major contributions of these papers, the background and level of knowledge in the area before the papers were published, how data were obtained and interpreted, what scientific principles were involved in the generation of the data. The approaches illustrated in the lectures can then be applied in the term papers. There are no strict page limits on the term papers, but they should be in the range of 10 to 20 pages double spaced. Original figures and tables or figures and tables adapted from other publications can be included in the term paper. A photocopy of the article upon which the term paper is based should accompany the term paper. In most cases a list of citations will be included, but the list should not be extensive.

Handouts Handouts for the course are available online on the WebCT Vista home page. These should be printed and brought to class. Several figures and tables in the handouts will come from your textbook. Additional figures will come from the primary literature and other sources including other textbooks. The source of figures will be noted in the handout pages, but usually in an abbreviated form. The following sources are used fairly extensively. An asterisk denotes that the text has been put on reserve for this course.

1. *Benjamin Lewin, GENES III, 1987, published by John Wiley & Sons. I have used figures in this older textbook because very limited color is used. In the newer versions of Lewins textbooks, the color complexity of the figures is increased, but the clarity of the information is decreased.

2. *David Freifelder, Molecular Biology, 1987, published by Jones and Bartlett. I consider Freifelder to be the best writer of molecular biology textbooks ever. Unfortunately for us, he is no longer living. This textbook is the "unabridged" version that gave rise to the book we are using for the course "Essentials of Molecular Biology, 4 th edition" (the first three editions had Freifelder and Malacinski as co-authors). In writing the shorter version, sometimes some leaps in logic have been made that render the material difficult to understand. By using some of the figures from the 1987 book, I hope to fill in some of the gaps.

3. *Robert F. Weaver, Molecular Biology, 2005, published by McGraw Hill.

4. *Larry Snyder and Wendy Champness, Molecular Genetics of Bacteria, 1997, published by American Society for Microbiology.

5. Carl Branden and John Tooze, Introduction to Protein Structure, 1999, Garland Publishers.

6. D. Latchman, Gene Regulation, 1995, Chapman & Hall Publishers.

7. Maxine Singer and Paul Berg, Genes and Genomes, 1991, University Science Books

8. Stephen Wolfe, Molecular and Cellular Biology, 1993, Wadsworth Publishers.

9. Richard Sinden, DNA Structure and Function, 1994, Academic Press.

See following pages for schedule.

Schedule