🏛️ Institution: Duke University
👨🏫 Instructor: Dr. Mohamed Noor, Earl D. McLean Professor and Chair, Biology department
🎓 Learning Platform: Coursera
🔗 Course url Link: Introduction to Genetics and Evolution
📜 Certificate of completion: Available upon request
📝 Notes: notes.md
This course introduces the basic concepts of classical genetics, population genetics and evolutionary biology. It covers how traits are inherited, how genetic variation arises and is passed on and how populations evolve over time. The course also explores important key methods such as genetic mapping, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and molecular phylogenetics. Aspecial attention is given to real-world applications of evolutionary theory in fields like health, ancestry and biodiversity.
| Week | Module Title |
|---|---|
| 1 | Welcome to Genetics and Evolution |
| 2 | Evidence for Evolution |
| 3 | Genetics I |
| 4 | Genetics II |
| 5 | Genetics III |
| 6 | Heritability and Population Growth |
| 7 | Population Genetics I |
| 8 | Population Genetics II |
| 9 | Molecular Evolution |
| 10 | Adaptive Behaviors and Sexual Selection |
| 11 | Speciation and Phylogenetics |
| 12 | Applied Evolution |
As a Master’s student in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology specializing in Molecular Cancer Biology and Bioinformatics, this course provided me with a structured understanding of genetic variation, inheritance and population-level genetic dynamics—essential when analyzing tumor heterogeneity, somatic mutations, or even studying the genetic basis of disease susceptibility. The detailed essential explanation of GWAS, recombination mapping and natural selection mechanisms helped me very much to bridge my background in molecular biology with computational approaches used in genome analysis.
It also clarified key population genetics concepts—such as Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, genetic drift and dN/dS ratios—which frequently appear in other cancer genomics studies and variant interpretation pipelines.
- Classical and molecular inheritance patterns
- Recombination and genetic mapping
- Genetic basis of complex traits
- Population genetics and evolutionary dynamics
- Phylogenetic inference and species evolution
- Interpretation of GWAS and genotype–phenotype relationships
This folder contains my personal study notes and reflections based on the publicly available course structure of Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Coursera.
All original course materials, including videos, slides and assignments, belong to Duke University and Coursera.
This folder does not contain any proprietary or copyrighted content from the course.
It is intended solely for personal educational use.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).