BI401- Origin of Life and Endosymbiotic Theory — Outline
Instructor: Cesar Quinones (email: [email protected])
Office hours: Daily 09:30am to 11:30 am (or by appointment) at SR-313
(tentative location)
This course is heavily self-directed learning. Normally, each lecture class will be
a discussion/clarification on reading material that each student should have
found and reviewed before the class. The research material is aimed at finding
new concepts related to a particular theme, where the main focus will be
research related to Endosymbiotic theory and the origin of life.
The contents of the course are composed of several layers of research.
Sometimes, I will provide a research article(s) to read. Other times, I will provide
clues that should allow the students to find the article(s) in question. Reading the
articles, finding new concepts, and figuring out a way to learn what those
concepts are all about are important tasks for the student.
Students are expected to know their way through online search engines, and to
be able to distinguish reliable information, from noise. Wikipedia is not a bad
place to start, but students should make sure that the answers they find match
the problems we are talking about in the articles, in class, and about genome
dynamics. Students should also consult resources such as PubMed
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed),
ISI
Web
of
Science
(webofknowledge.com) and Google scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), should
also provide good references.
Overview of topics:
Central themes for the course are:
1. Early Life on Earth
2. Prokaryotic Life-Archaea and Eubacteria
3. Prokaryotes vs. Eukaryotes
4. Origin of Eukaryotes
5. Mitochondria
6. Chloroplasts
7. Synthesis of Serial Endosymbiotic Theory
How we approach each theme will vary from term to term as new publications
might make for better reading material. Remember that the overall purpose is to
learn about this interesting area of research, at the same time that you become
an excellent self-directed learner, and also learn to think your way through new
concepts.
Marking (tentative)
Marks depend on these activities:
•
4 Quizzes: 40%
•
3 Online submitted homework: 40%
•
Overall summary of the topics learned during the course (submit online):
20%
•
In-class participation: might make the difference between night and day.
Quizzes/Tests
The quizzes can be about anything learned during the course so far, and make
use of pre-requisites too. These emphasize thinking with the concepts, rather
than rot memorization of the concepts. Sometimes the task will be to translate
data from one format to another. Other times it might be putting concepts
together to answer a scientific question. Other times it might be to reason your
way through a new concept based on what you have learned so far.
Online submitted homework
This will be submitting of either concept definitions, or answers to guiding
questions.
Good overall summaries
Put together your notes from the course in a coherent plot about genome
dynamics from the perspective of horizontal gene transfer, insertion elements,
what is our genome? What is truly what you learned from this course? Use your
own words. Don’t be afraid of drawing. Try to be concise but show that you
learned something.
Use of electronics devices
During the lectures the use of electronic devices as cell phones, tablets and
laptops, are only restricted to support the learning experience. Under emergency
situation could be used without distracting or affect the development of classes.
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