We will discuss several genetic diseases in lecture, and demonstrate the Positional Cloning strategy that has become so successful in isolating the mutated genes for human diseases; this strategy now includes the fully sequenced human genome. The availability of the sequenced human genome has enabled newer approaches such as GWAS (Genome Wide Association Studies) and PheWAS (phenotypic wide association studies). The latest GWAS strategies use both SNP and the new parallel sequencing tactics, and are enhanced greatly by the HapMap and ENCODE projects. Now molecular geneticists use the best featrues of these two major strategies (Positional Cloning and GWAS) to hunt for the mutated genes causing diseases in humans. But both GWAS and ENCODE remain controversial, with adherents and opponents.

Through such lecture discussions you will see the analytical procedures that you will need for your web project, and for presentations to the class. I will provide you with a detailed description of the requirements for your disease gene project, along with criteria for grading. Please note that understanding HTML script language is not required to successfully accomplish the project goals. You may completely construct your web project from auxiliary programs such as Dreamweaver. In addition, both WordPerfect and MS Word allow you to convert text documents to HTML and XML mark-up languages.