Welcome to Biology 127 for Interim 2004! The course is entitled "Genetics, Evolution, & Society" and addresses a wide variety of genetic issues in an evolutionary framework and how they relate to human society (past and present).
- As I was trying to put together the list of subjects to be covered in the course, I quickly became overwhelmed with the number of interesting topics, and frustrated by the inability to cover them all in four weeks. Because of time constraints, we are necessarily only skimming the surface of "genetics, evolution, and society." But that's OK. In this course students will practice their ability to approach, understand, and apply scientific issues; they will be able to take these skills with them beyond the course and use them later with the topics we didnít have time to cover this January.
- In this course students will also take a hands-on approach to doing science. They'll extract DNA from cells, clone a gene, and investigate crime with DNA fingerprinting. And in doing these things, they will become acutely aware of how accessible biotechnology techniques areÖ perhaps this is a good thing (opportunity for widespread beneficial applications of biotechnology), but perhaps it is not (too easy to perform biotechnology without discussion of ethics).
- Speaking of ethics, I expect that much discussion will come about as we explore varied and sometimes personal topics in science. Our class will be a forum for open and respectful discussion where each person has a right to be heard. Each student will be encouraged to explain her/his own viewpoint as well as to make a sincere effort to understand the viewpoints of others. Grading will in no way reflect the personal opinions of students.
Use of this web page is largely for exploring relevant links that I hope to post fairly regularly. Most of the electronic resources for this class will be found on the course server space - St Olaf IIT has directions for accessing this server space for both on campus and off campus.
General Syllabus of Topics with Relevant (or Irrelevant?) Links
Date: Class Topic: Links & Other Resources: 1/5 Science, Paradigms, & Life
European Molecular Biology Organization article on science in a societal context (mentions the craniometry study we talked about in class)NASA's web site on one way the scientific method is used to explore the questions "How did life get here?"
1/6 Chemistry of Life & Cell Structure
Some protein structure animations can be found at this site and at this siteMonty Python and the Holy Grail web site!
1/7 Cells & DNA
Here is a serious (University of Cambridge) site on the discovery of DNA, and a couple of lighter sites: one about "DNA Music" and one about how to order your own personalized DNA fingerprint!1/8 & 1/9 Gene Expression & Mutation
Here is an animation of transcription; and here is an animation of translation.1/12 Genetic Engineering
This is a nice web site on making a knockout mouse - kind of detailed, but still pretty clear.Here is a fun little paper by a Davidson College student on GFP as a reporter gene. My favorite part is the quote underneath the author's name!
1/13 Intro to Cloning
The Roslin Institute's site on Dolly the cloned sheep.1/14 Genetically Modified Foods
Web site of the Scientific American article on GM foods as well as the link to the New Scientist news briefs on trade of GM foods.1/15 Human Cloning
A Time Magazine article about the Raelians
1/19 & 1/20 Genetic Privacy
Here is an NIH slide show on understanding genetic screeningAnd here is the ELSI page of the Human Genome Project
1/21 DNA & Forensics 1/22 Eugenics 1/26 Human Genetic Diseases & Genetic Counseling 1/27 Cell Cycle & Development 1/28 Biology of Cancer 1/28 (lab) Genetics & Art -- Other Fun Links
Jean Porterfield's Personal Web Page