Welcome to Genes, Development and Evolution !

This course is suitable for credit toward an undergraduate Minor in Genetics at NCSU, and is designed as an evolutionary/organismal alternative to the molecular and cellular genetics course "Advanced Genetics" (GN413).

It will be offered each Spring Semester, and in 2000 will have the experimental number GN495G. In future, it will be GN414.

Course Description The aim of this course will be to encourage you to synthesize concepts relating to development and evolution, using genetics as a foundation. The motivation is that most courses in biology consider phenomena at a single organizational scale (molecules, cells, organisms, populations, ecosystems, or taxa), whereas a complete understanding of evolution will require the ability to think comfortably at the various hierarchical levels. Lecture material will cover paleontology and the broad shape of morphology in the tree of life; comparative embryology and classical developmental biology; the fundamentals of molecular genetics with particular attention to developmental regulatory mechanisms; molecular systematics; the new field of genomic science; the basics of population and quantitative genetics; and the use of model experimental systems in the study of development and evolution. During the last quarter of the semester, students will conduct a series of mini-symposia in which you will present and discuss your own papers addressing questions such as: How conserved are developmental mechanisms? Is there such a thing as a unified evolutionary theory? Can microevolution be extrapolated to macroevolution? How do novel genetic pathways originate?

Please see the Course Syllabus for individual lecture notes.