I am in the process of teaching a course on “DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity” and I thought it would be of use to some people to post about it. So here goes. I have made a landing page for the course and for slides and such material here.
EVE 161: DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity
This course is being offered this quarter at UC Davis via the Evolution and Ecology department (my home department). And I will be posting slides and recordings of class there as well. The course is summarized in Lecture 1 where I provide an outline of the course.
Slides I used in Class 1 are available via Slideshare.
The general outline for the course is to cover what I consider to be the four eras of DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity:
- Era 1: The Tree of Life
- Era 2: rRNA Surveys from Environments
- Era 3: Genome Sequencing
- Era 4: Metagenomics
The main approach I take in the course is reading and discussing key papers on
- The pioneering work of each “Era”
- The scope of what is possible in the era
- Case studies of specific ecosystems or recent papers
I also have one lecture on DNA sequencing methods.
In the 1st class I basically cover and outline of where we are going and also do a brief “background” discussion on phylogenetic trees. There is a paper that I use to cover the scope of Lecture 1, though it is not ideal:
Eisen JA (2007) Environmental Shotgun Sequencing: Its Potential and Challenges for Studying the Hidden World of Microbes. PLoS Biol 5(3): e82. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050082
Anyway – will be posting more about each “lecture”.