home Uncategorized EVE 161 at #UCDavis – DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity – Lecture 1 recap

EVE 161 at #UCDavis – DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity – Lecture 1 recap

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”.

 

 

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