Online lecture series on genomics and bioinformatics Grant Jacobs

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A current lecture course surveying genomics and bioinformatics is available online, hosted on YouTube by GenomeTV. Handouts for the thirteen week course are hosted on the course website. We’re told that the course includes an update on technologies that have changed over the past two years.
These lectures are introductory. They are aimed at biologists who wish to learn more about genomics or bioinformatics, perhaps because their upcoming work intersects with it, rather those who already have some detailed knowledge or experience of the field. I would add that, being lectures, they are high-flying in the sense that they do not deal with the actual hands-on work involved, which introduces finer detail and further issues not covered in these lectures.
The lectures cover a wide range of topics; the full schedule is shown below. If you are looking for an overview on the field, you could do worse than sit through these lectures at your leisure.
Here’s the full course schedule:
  • The Genomic Landscape circa 2012 (Eric Green, NHGRI)
  • Biological Sequence Analysis I (Andy Baxevanis, NHGRI)
  • Genome Browsers (Tyra Wolfsberg, NHGRI)
  • Biological Sequence Analysis II (Andy Baxevanis, NHGRI)
  • Regulatory and Epigenetic Landscapes of Mammalian Genomes (Laura Elnitski, NHGRI)
  • Next-Generation Sequencing Technologies (Elaine Mardis, Washington University at St. Louis)
  • Introduction to Population Genetics (Lynn Jorde, University of Utah)
  • Genome-Wide Association Studies (Karen Mohlke, University of North Carolina)
  • Pharmacogenomics (Howard McLeod, University of North Carolina)
  • Large-Scale Expression Analysis (Paul Meltzer, NCI)
  • Genomic Medicine (Bruce Korf, University of Alabama at Birmingham)
  • Applications of Genomics to Improve Public Health (Colleen McBride, NHGRI)
  • Genomics of Microbes and Microbiomes (Julie Segre, NHGRI)
Readers looking for slides of the talks, should check the handouts available on the course website.
At over an hour long each, these are substantial lectures – you’ll want plenty of time before tackling these.
The Genomic Landscape circa 2012
The first lecture, shown below, opens with an overview of the course, before introducing the speaker, Eric Green. In this presentation he offers his perspective on the current ‘genomic (human) landscape’, in part working off his history in field.[1]
Those with some familiarity with the genome project may wish to move straight to the more ‘practical’ lecture. Some might prefer to skim fairly quickly through the first 13 minutes or so of the opening lecture. Green has a lot to say, much worth hearing for those new to it, but I have to admit I dislike that he initially spends a fair bit of time telling us what is going to tell us, rather than simply telling us it.[2] (My opinion here won’t be helped by that I’m already very familiar with this ground; others’ views might therefore differ.)