BIO 5018 - Human Genetics and Personalized Medicine

The newest revolution in healthcare is personalized medicine - using the genetic information in a tumor or genome to design specific individualized treatment plans based on the molecular information.  This course will begin with a foundation of basic concepts and practices in human genetics and genomics, followed by a survey of genetic defects and the therapies that have been designed to treat them, and finally the application of DNA sequencing to tailored therapies for cancers and other genetic diseases in individual patients.  The laboratory will be project based and incorporate standard and cutting-edge laboratory techniques to manipulate genomes similar to how gene therapy might be carried out using CRISPR-Cas.  Graduate students are expected to achieve at a very high level in the course and complete additional assignments.  Graduate students will be responsible for leading teams of undergraduate students in the laboratory class.  They will be responsible for coordinating the on-line laboratory notebooks for their group and they will provide a weekly written recap of the experiments performed, which will be included in their on-line group laboratory notebook.  In addition, they will write a final summary and evaluation of their team’s project, and evaluate their own leadership performance. Graduate students who have taken BIO3018 Human Genetics and Personalized Medicine as an undergraduate may not take this course for credit.