Genetic Interactions

1 Credit · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course discusses the genetic tools and logical framework underlying research into diverse cellular processes in all organisms. Principles of genetic interactions will be illustrated with examples from a major eukaryotic model organism, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After a brief description of the basic biology and methods of classical yeast genetics, we will move on to an in-depth discussion of genetic interactions and how these are used to identify protein complexes, and construct detailed genetic pathways. In the last part of the course we will discuss high-throughput genomic approaches that attempt to identify all of the relevant genetic interactions, and then use that information to infer the function of all the genes in the genome.