2007 - 2008 Courses

Epilepsy is a complex and highly heterogeneous neurological disorder that can have a devastating impact on the lives of patients and their families. This year, Advances in Neuropharmacology will focus on this important neurological disorder. Students participating in this interdisciplinary course will gain an understanding of the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of this multifactorial disorder. Basic science lectures focused on the pathophysiology of epilepsy at the molecular, genetic, and network level will be integrated into clinical lectures by neurologists, neurosurgeons, and psychiatrists in an effort to provide the student with a comprehensive overview of the current issues surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of the patient with epilepsy. The student will gain a greater appreciation for the approaches employed by the basic scientist to delineate the factors that contribute to the development of epilepsy and the processes involved in the identification and characterization of new therapies (e.g., drugs, deep brain stimulation, and vagal nerve stimulation) for the patient with refractory epilepsy. In addition, the student will have the opportunity to learn how the newly diagnosed patient is evaluated and how different diagnostic tools (EEG, MEG, CT, MRI, fMRI, and depth recording) are employed in an effort to localize the seizure focus for the patient who might be a candidate for surgical resection. This fully integrated course will provide the student with the opportunity to hear first-hand from patients how their seizure disorder impacts their lives. Finally, students will be presented with a unique opportunity to learn how they can participate in basic, clinical, and/or translational research on epilepsy at the University of Utah.

Basic programming skills are rapidly becoming an essential skill for research in genetics, genomics, and molecular/developmental biology. Emphasis in this course will be on programming essentials for bioinformatics; no prior knowledge will be required. Students will learn the basics of the unix operating system, simple command line programming with sed & awk and how to write their own perl programs. Topics will include manipulating mircoarray data, sequence files, and how to post-process database search results. Skills taught will include: getting around in the UNIX operating system, vi, basic scripting, file IO, regular expressions, subroutines, modules, and object oriented programming. Students will also learn how to leverage existing Perl-based bioinformatics software libraries such as Bioperl. Students will leave the class with their own self-designed programming tool-kit that will provide a starting point for bioinformatics analyses during the remainder of their graduate careers.

PREREQUISITES: Open to all doctoral graduate students. Maximum enrollment is twenty (20) students.

This course will provide students with a rigorous introduction to the theory and practice of DNA and protein sequence analysis. Subjects will include sequence alignment & genome annotation; quantitative models of sequence change; methods for inferring phylogenetic relationships; and linkage mapping. These subjects will be illustrated with examples drawn from a wide range of fields including medical genetics, anthropological genetics, and comparative genome analysis.

PREREQUISITES: Open to all doctoral graduate students. Maximum enrollment is twenty-five (25) students.

This course will explore the molecular, developmental, and genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change, with an emphasis on current research in animal biology. Topics include regulatory networks and signaling pathways, modularity, developmental constraints, origin of animals, molecular/developmental origin of diverse body plans and appendages, and genetics of speciation. The class will consist of both lectures and discussions of current literature. Suitable for graduate students at all levels.

PREREQUISITES: Open to all doctoral graduate students. Maximum enrollment is twenty (20) students.

This advanced course covers basic and clinical aspects of human physiology. All major organ systems including nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, endocrine, and renal will be presented by physiologists with expertise in each respective area. The course is open to graduate students from all science majors.