Courses:

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This course is targeted to medical students, biomedical scientists, biomedical engineers, and instructors of future genomic medicine and related courses. Advanced concepts in the bioinformatics field will be carefully introduced and require no advanced math/statistics background. Where computation is needed, the students will be provided with working tools and relevant data sets from real world examples.

Some of the questions addressed in the course include:

• What real benefits of genomics can be anticipated in the near future in terms of new drugs and treatments?
• Which strategies to date have been the most successful?
• How can diagnosis and the diagnostic process be changed today?
• How do our prognostic abilities change?
• How does one manage the deluge of clinically relevant genomic data?
• What constitutes a genomic clinical trial?
• What are the useful features of alternative genomic technologies today and for the near future?
• What are the different kinds of genomic informational resources and databases? Are they useful and how?
• How can the drug discovery process make better use of genomic information?
• What are the ethical individual and corporate challenges ahead?
• What are the key limitations we face?

Pre-requisites

Molecular Biology and Genetics in Modern Medicine (HST.160) or basic introductory genetics, facility with a programming language (e.g., Perl), or instructor's permission.

Texts

 Brown, Terence A. Genomes. 2nd ed. Wiley-Liss, June 15, 2002. ISBN: 9780471250463 .

 Kohane, Isaac S., Alvin Kho, and Atul J. Butte. Microarrays for an Integrative Genomics . MIT Press, August 21, 2002. ISBN: 9780471250463 .

 Dhanda, Rahul K. Guiding Icarus: Merging Bioethics with Corporate Interests. 1st ed. Wiley-Liss, April 5, 2002. ISBN: 9780471223801 .

Course Requirements

Course meets for 2 lectures/week (1.5 hours/lecture); 3 problem sets assigned. In addition, students are required to give a 20-minute oral presentation and complete a scientific, publication-quality paper, approximately 10 pages long.