Hello, and welcome to module two.
Well, now we're gonna jump right on into the material,
the heart of the foundation of genetics and genomics.
So we're going to take it from the first lecture,
the cell perspective, and just break it down to, you know,
where is DNA, how is it existing in the cell?
How is it affecting, why does it matter?
How does it affect how tissues and cells function?
So we're gonna take a look there,
and then we're gonna move to the second lecture
in the module on DNA structure.
Now, I know structure in biochemistry
can sometimes elicit really painful memories,
and believe me, I understand that.
When I go through structure,
I'm really just going to focus on
what I think is necessary
and important for you to have a sufficient understanding
to move forward with what we're going to learn
in the rest of the course.
It's not going to be every last little atom
and hydrogen bond and all of that.
It's really just, here are the fundamentals.
Here's what you need to understand, so that then we can take
that understanding forward to the next module
and build on it from there,
and then take it out more broadly to
a clinical understanding of what's going on.
So, worry not.
Hopefully, I have been able to really just focus in
on the parts that are going to be necessary for you.
And then the third lecture is going to be
on the central dogma,
which I know sounds like I'm starting
to teach you philosophy,
but actually is, is a really critical,
as you can tell from the name,
really critical concept in genetics
and really all of biology.
And it's going to be one that's absolutely critical
for us to understand before we move on.
So for some of you who maybe have had genetics classes
in the past or more bio classes in the past,
this is probably going to be a review for you,
and I think that's great.
You know, hopefully you'll at least, you know,
fire up those neurons again,
that hold the memories of all of this kind of material.
For those of you who are new to this or, you know,
it's been a while since you covered this material,
the goal here is really to set the foundation
and set one that we're all on an even,
on an even playing field when we move on from here.
So even if it's a review for you,
hopefully you get something new out of it,
or at least a good refresher on it.
If it is new to you,
my goal again is to provide you sufficient amount of
information and perspective to, to give you the,
a solid base for us to really build from there.
So, as with all modules, you're going to have your lectures,
and I have a voiceover PowerPoint for those
in the lectures folder, as well as the PowerPoint files
that go along with those if you'd like to,
to have those to take notes on.
Then we have a quiz that you can, again, as always,
take up to three times with your highest score recorded
and a discussion board post here.
I have a prompt for you that I'd like you to respond to.
And then I also have another forum that I've set up
for module two, which was just any kind of questions
that you might have or comments that you want to make
that's not related to the specific prompts I'm giving you
for this week.
I want you to have a space to be able to, you know,
to bring those questions up or make those comments
and, you know, have some discussion going there as well.
So that's available.
The assignment for this week is, again,
since this is really,
really the fundamentals of genetics,
I want to make sure we're all on the same page
with the vocabulary that we're using.
So I have a list of terms that are critical terms for,
for genetics, and I'd like you to define those.
So it's a Word document, you just download it
and then you can type in for each of the terms
that I have there in the definition.
And I'd encourage you to try to do this
after you've gone through the lecture material,
after you've done the reading that you can go back
and then see if maybe there's some terms that
you thought you knew, but then when you actually put,
started to write it out you realize
maybe I don't quite fully understand that.
That'll be a helpful cue to you to know
where maybe you can go back and look at that section again
a little more closely.
So maybe just try it the first time through
without using your books and notes
and then see where you're having a little bit
of a struggle to define it,
and then go back and look that up again.
So the assignment is there.
The required reading, you have just a few pages
from the textbook this week
because I want to make sure again that we're getting those,
the fundamentals down and not much in the textbook on that.
So I have that.
But then to supplement it,
because the textbook doesn't have a ton of information on
some of these basic concepts,
I've included some excerpts from a book chapter that I wrote
on genetics and it covers all of these terms as well.
So that can be another resource for you to use.
And in that textbook chapter,
I have some practice questions
and things like that with answers posted at the end
if you're, if you're interested in doing that.
But just to give you another resource to use to
better understand some of these concepts.
Alright, well, I believe that will cover it for this week.
It was so great to read all of your introductions.
Thank you all for introducing yourselves.
I'm really excited.
This is such a wonderful group of,
of folks on board for this, for this semester,
and I really look forward to engaging with each of you
and bringing in your individual backgrounds
and experiences to the course.
And we already had some great questions coming up
and some discussions based upon those,
and I look forward to keeping that up.
And yeah so with that, I will close out for this week.
Just want to say if this is kind of like your first foray
back into molecular biology or genetics,
I understand, believe me,
I understand this can seem a bit overwhelming when you start
jumping back into this kind of material.
It's a way of thinking that maybe you haven't
engaged in in a while
or wasn't something that you really focused on
when you were in college.
I totally understand that.
It can seem, you know, a bit foreign,
like a totally different language and you know,
you're jumping into it.
But I think actually the foreign language analogy's
a good one.
When you start learning a foreign language,
it all sounds foreign, right?
It all sounds overwhelming
and tough to know how to even jump in there and communicate
and what it is you're hearing.
I promise you, I promise you that sticking through it
with this course, you will start to pick up more and more
and more of this foreign language
and it will start to make more
and more sense to you is certainly my goal
and something I know that you can achieve
absolutely without question.
So hang in there, know that you're going to be able to do it
and you're gonna do an amazing job with it.
I have no doubt about that.
If you do have questions along the way,
I am at your disposal,
please feel free to post the discussion board,
email me directly if you prefer,
talk to your fellow classmates on the discussion board.
We're gonna do it, we're gonna do it together.
I look forward to speaking with each of you
on the discussion board.
Take care.