Introduction to Genetics and Evolution

Genetics is at the center of all biology because gene activity underlies all biological processes!

It is a common observation that seeds of mango trees germinate to grow into mango plants, and dogs give birth to puppies only and not into the young ones of any other animal. Humans give birth to human beings.

The tendency(zinbalie) of offspring’s to inherit parental characteristics is termed as ‘heredity’ and the study of science of heredity and the reasons governing the variation between the parents and their offspring’s, is called ‘Genetics’.

Genetics also seeks to answer questions like why two offspring of same parents look different, why some people have dark, and others have fair complexion. In other words, why is there variation among individuals of the same kind? This lesson deals with heredity and the reasons behind the variation among individuals of the same species. It also includes diagnostic techniques to find out the bases for types of sex determination, inheritance of blood groups in humans, hereditary disorders and gives an insight up the human genome as amniocentesis.

Whenever an infant is born in a family, the relatives begin to wonder about the

resemblance of the infant’s eyes, facial features, complexion, colour of hair with

those of the parents, siblings and grandparents. The source of such resemblances

and differences are in the “genes” that are passed down form parents to children

and so on generation after generation. This inheritance of genes is termed ‘heredity’ the study of reasons of heredity is ‘Genetics’. New individuals develop features according to the genes inherited by them from their parents. The transmission of characters from one generation to the next that is from parents to off springs is known as heredity

I'm taking this course currently and already running ahead of schedule on Week 3 despite the course set to begin 10 days later. It's solely because of the interesting way in which the material is presented by Professor Noor and how well he organises the ideas he has to convey. He also offers great resources. The quizzes aren't too easy and aren't too hard. They just require some effort, which is nice.

I have a little bit of advice though. It would be great to have an understanding of basic genetics and cellular reproduction before you take this course: things like mitosis, meiosis, DNA replication, transcription, translation, basics of Mendel's laws etc. I took a semester of General Biology before this course, which made me comfortable even as he whizzed by these topics in the first two weeks. I'd definitely have had to put in more effort on my own to understand these things had I not known them before.

This is an excellent class. The topic is interesting and very relevant today with the availability of direct-to-consumer DNA analysis. Prof. Noor has put together a wide array of material that will enable you to much better understand and appreciate the beauty of evolution and the power genomics is bringing to our world.

There are no prerequisites. The class took a fair bit of effort to answer a problem set each week. The problem sets were well designed. The two exams were challenging and fun. If you've gotten an analysis from 23andMe, you should take this class.

My biggest reward came a day ago when I looked at a journal paper online with an interesting title. While I didn't understand everything, I could read and make sense of much of the material. Thank you Prof Noor!