How to teach a course on Genome Evolution

Even though genomes have been sequenced for over two decades, I find that genomics is still not properly taught in most universities. In particular, Evolution is generally not awarded its proper place in the understanding of genomes.

In 2003, and then again in 2004, as a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute I created a course called Evolutionary Genomics which was a lot of fun. I taught it a couple more times at the Technion as an assistant professor, but it was always my dream to turn it into a book.

Joining forces with Martin Lercher we made that dream a reality and we are so proud of the The Society of Genes book! We did it by revamping the old course together. I’m happy to make available our slides here:

1. The sequence architecture of the human genome and the E. coli genome
2. Cancer as a disease of the genome
3. The genomic basis for the animal and bacterial immune systems
4. The genomic democracy of sex
5. Human genetic variation
6. Gene flow and speciation
7. Genotype-phenotype maps
8. Developmental genomics: same genes, different animals.
9. Genomic innovation (gene duplication and horizontal transfer)
10. The origin of eukaryotes
11. The evolution of selfishness (the battle between the cells and the viruses)

I hope these might be helpful to anyone interested in teaching The Society of Genes!

Itai Yanai, yanai.itai[at]gmail.com