Genes and the Human Condition (From Behavior to Biotechnology)

开始时间: 04/22/2022 持续时间: Unknown

所在平台: CourseraArchive 课程类别: 医学 大学或机构: University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学学院园分校） 授课老师： Raymond J. St. Leger Tammatha O'Brien

课程主页: https://www.coursera.org/course/genes

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课程详情

In this class we will cover the essentials of genomics to help you better understand your own life (know thy genome, know thyself), and how advances in biotechnology are radically changing the scientific landscape.

We will begin with some of the most basic issues of genetics, such as the composition of genomes and how the information in them is processed so we can get an adult human from an egg. Then we’ll see that much of the power of genomics is in comparisons. If I only had your genome there's not much I could do with it. But if I lined it up against a chimpanzee genome I’d see that they are 98.5% identical. It’s that 1.5% difference that we study to determine what makes a chimp a chimp and a human a human. 

In the next few years you’ll be able to get your genome done for a few hundred dollars, and we will look at the challenges you might face dealing with this new self-knowledge. We shall particularly focus on behavior. How can genes predispose some of us to be nice and others of us to be psychopaths? We will be examining behavior as a complex unfolding of interactions between your genome and the environment.

Thanks in large part to genomics we are beginning to understand the living processes that constitute ourselves, where we can begin to intervene to take control of our own future. We will look at the technologies involved and the consequences of this new power. Genetic engineering has already changed what you eat and the medicines you take, and will likely therefore change how long you live. If we choose to genetically engineer ourselves as some advocate then we may also change how we view ourselves as human beings. We do not know where our ability to intervene in our own living processes is going to lead us. Depending on your point of view that is the promise or the threat of the era we live in. Scientists today already envisage creating life from scratch, and we are entering a world where political considerations, and imagination, may be the only brakes on biotechnology.

课程大纲

Lectures

Week 1. An Introduction to Genetics and Learning the Lingo  

Week 2. A History Lesson-Comparative Genomics, know thy ancestors  

Week 3. My Genes Made Me Do It, An examination of the role of genes in behavior, and midterm exam (from weeks 1-3 material)

Week 4. My Genes Didn’t Make Me Do It. Beyond The Genes, Nature via Nurture, and Epigenetics  

Week 5. An Introduction to Genetic Engineering and Learning the Lingo  

Week 6. The Future is Now, Biotechnology and Final Exam (cumulative)

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to describe/demonstrate:

I. A conceptual and holistic understanding of genetics that includes the major questions arising at the intersection of genetics, genomics and society. The course will stress human genetics.

II. An understanding of terms, concepts, and approaches used in studying genetics and genomics. As a case study, the course will examine behavioral genetics: James Watson likes to say “the 20th century saw the fusion of genetics and biochemistry, so the 21st century will see the fusion of genetics and psychology.”

III. An understanding of the power of comparative genomics. In this aspect, the course will focus particularly on human evolution as illuminated by the genomes of chimpanzees and several extinct human kinds including the Neanderthals.

IV. An understanding of the scientific, political, legal, social, economic and ethical issues raised by genomics and the application of biotechnology to “transhumanism.”

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