Best online course on genetics engineering

[Hugues]

Hello DIYBio !

I'm looking for one of the best and up to date online course on genetics engineering, as an introduction and to get the basics.

I'm a 51 years old engineer currently working in manufacturing in the food industry.

I'm preparing a second career and would like to do R&D work initially and potentially start a small bio tech company in the future.

I'm looking for an extensive course, free or not, with proper exams and certification, that could be done part time over 1 year or more, and possible advanced courses afterwards.

Thanks for your suggestions, so far i have found these 2:

http://geneticscertificate.stanford.edu/certificate-overview

http://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate-degree-programs/biotechnology/

I have biology and chemistry level from high school and college, and good scientific background with a growing interest in bio technologies.

[Alexey Zaytsev]

Hey,

take a look at 7.00x from EdX. Lectures are great. Homework is great. Exams are great. Not sure how official is the certification, but they have both free and paid certificates, and the knowledge you gain from it is exceptional.

I don't think there is a year long course, so you will have to find different ones, but this one will get you quite far already.

Source: I did it while switching from programming to molecular biology, it worked out great!

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[Hugues]

Hey Alexey,

thanks for this proposal, it does seem to fit pretty well what i was looking for ! And the course reviews are excellent.

I was not aware of EdX either, they seem to have a rich collection of courses,

thanks for that, you helped me kick start this new journey !

Hugues

On Sunday, 25 September 2016 07:01:41 UTC+2, Alexey Zaytsev wrote:

Hey,

take a look at 7.00x from EdX. Lectures are great. Homework is great. Exams are great. Not sure how official is the certification, but they have both free and paid certificates, and the knowledge you gain from it is exceptional.

I don't think there is a year long course, so you will have to find different ones, but this one will get you quite far already.

Source: I did it while switching from programming to molecular biology, it worked out great!

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 3:41 AM, Hugues <lalibe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello DIYBio !

I'm looking for one of the best and up to date online course on genetics engineering, as an introduction and to get the basics.

I'm a 51 years old engineer currently working in manufacturing in the food industry.

I'm preparing a second career and would like to do R&D work initially and potentially start a small bio tech company in the future.

I'm looking for an extensive course, free or not, with proper exams and certification, that could be done part time over 1 year or more, and possible advanced courses afterwards.

Thanks for your suggestions, so far i have found these 2:

http://geneticscertificate.stanford.edu/certificate-overview

http://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate-degree-programs/biotechnology/

I have biology and chemistry level from high school and college, and good scientific background with a growing interest in bio technologies.

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[Bryan Daniels]

In addition to the Edx 7.00.x previously mentioned, there is a series, also on EdX, of three molecular biology courses that are the best online courses I've come across. The series is a mainstay at MIT. The courses and focus are: 7.28.1x - Replication and Repair, 7.28.2x - Transcription and Transposition and 7.28.3x - Translation (not to be released until 2017). The professors are Stephen Bell and Tammy Baker, both of whom co-authored with James Watson one of the best regarded texts in the field: Molecular Biology of the Gene. It's an advanced course and quite challenging, but extremely rewarding. It focused heavily on assays, which makes it a bit more practical. I would, however, start with 7.00x, which is also a remarkable course.

You might also checkout MIT OCW, which is a repository of course available online from MIT.

All of this is free. Though there are certifications for the EdX courses, I'm not sure how broadly recognized these are.

Hope that helps.

[Hugues]

Thanks Bryan, I have already started Edx 7.00x, teacher is pretty good. When i have digested this one, i'll look at your proposals below, looks very specific and interesting, i've added them to my list of course to follow. I'm already booked for a full year i think now !

thanks again,

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

I found that learning by doing is most effective. Do you have a project in mind? 

E.g., immagine you want to genetically engineer strawberries that taste like banana. 

There http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:MIT/2006/Blurb is the circuit. 

You need these 3 enzymes that convert the amino acid leucine into isoamyl acetate (aka banana smell compound)

1. <bbpart>BBa_J45008</bbpart>: BAT2 - enzyme that catalyzes the first step in isoamyl alcohol biosynthesis from L-leucine (endogenous amino acid)
2. <bbpart>BBa_J45009</bbpart>: THI3 - enzyme that catalyzes the second step in isoamyl alcohol biosynthesis
3. <bbpart>BBa_J45014</bbpart>: ATF1 - enzyme that converts isoamyl alcohol to isoamyl acetate

Then you google plant expression vectors and will find pCambia. 

Then you add the genes for the three proteins into the plant vector, put it into agrobacterium and transform strawberries. 

On the way you will learn the techniques - miniprep. restriction digest, ligation, etc. 

Unless you need letters to put after your name like BSc, MSc, PhD. Unnecessary (but good) if you do a start-up yourself. 

Andreas

[Hugues]

Thanks Andreas for your input,

I agree, a lot of what we know we learn by doing, also through interacting with others on forums such as this one, and in formal training as well.

But remember I'm a mechanical engineer with high school and college level on biology and chemistry. I've always been interested in science in general including genetics, but i don't have the basics. I like to understand what i'm doing, how things work, so i can combine ideas and eventually find something novel or interesting.

2 weeks ago i would have read your first phrase below about enzymes and amino acids and i would not know what these are. Now i'm at the end of course 3 (out of 10) of Edx MITx: 7.00x Introduction to Biology , and because of this i better understand what you're describing.

But the rest of your procedure is still fuzzy. I do hope when i finished this first MITx course (and the 2 others proposed in this thread), i'll be able to make simple experiments on my own, with the help of forums members and build upon that.

I don't have yet a specific project in mind, but i'm pretty good at putting odd things together and coming up with interesting stuff sometimes. I believe coming from an unrelated field has disadvantages but it also makes it easier to think outside the box and explore paths that veterans would not bother to walk because of their assumptions.

thanks again for your input,

[Ja ja ja]

Man! Give me a call when they can make banannas taste like strawberries! Though the consistency would be a little strange, I guess. Anyway, cool project, thanks for sharing!