Introduction to Genetics and Evolution

Introduction to Genetics and Evolution is a college-level course provided to incoming students at Duke University at the same time. The course provides interested individuals with a very basic understanding of some of the ideas underlying these key areas of biology. They frequently hear about new "genome sequences," commercial kits that can tell you about your ancestry (including pre-human) from your DNA or disease predispositions, and debates about evolution's truth, why animals behave the way they do, and how people discover "genetic evidence for natural selection." This course teaches the fundamental biology needed to better comprehend all of these concerns, attempts to clear up certain myths, and attempts to prepare students for future, more advanced biology training (and especially evolutionary genetics). There is no prerequisite coursework.

In this course, you will discuss the definition of the word "evolution" in a biological context, evidence for the truth of evolution and common ancestry of species, and public thoughts and misconceptions about biological evolution. This module is optional and will not be included in the course assessments. There are no class discussion forums for this section, as they feel such discussion can happen on other, non-course-related, sites on this topic (of which there are a great many on the internet). delves somewhat more deeply into genetics and specifically the concept of "recombination." It begins to discuss how recombination is leveraged in classic genetic works as well as mapping simple genetic traits using crosses or data from natural populations. delves even more deeply into the complexities of the genetics underlying traits, the origin of genetic variation, and how "complex" traits (ones controlled by multiple genes) are studied genetically.

It introduces how population growth is studied by looking at the relative contributions of genetics and environment to traits, and it also introduces how population genetics is studied. It discusses how multiple individuals from natural populations can be studied genetically to begin to understand the evolutionary forces acting upon the populations. This one extends the previous one to specifically examine the effects of natural selection and genetic drift on genetic variation in natural populations. The final module talks about the applications and misapplications of many of the concepts discussed in the course to human health, understanding, and well-being. This module is optional and is not included in the assessments.

Dr. Mohamed Noor is the Earl D. McLean Professor and Chair of Biology at Duke University. His expertise is in molecular evolution, and a large part of his research has been devoted to trying to understand the genetic changes that ultimately lead to the formation of new species. More recently, his research team has used fruit fly species to understand the causes and evolutionary consequences of variation in rates of genetic recombination and exchange. Dr. Noor has received several awards for research, teaching, and mentoring and has been active in the scientific community, including serving as president of the American Genetic Association and the Society for the Study of Evolution, chair of the NIH study section in Genetic Variation and Evolution, and editor of the journal Evolution.

This course offers

• Flexible deadlines
• Shareable Certificate
• 100% online
• It takes approximately 25 hours to complete.
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian

Coursera rating: 4.8/5

Enroll here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/genetics-evolution