Online resources for studying genetics?

December 18, 2014 1:09 PM

I'm gearing up for a final exam in my undergraduate level genetics class, and I'm finding my textbook (iGenetics by Peter Russell) and the professor's slides are not sufficient for my study needs. I'd really like some more sources to review over the next few days. The topics on this final exam are operons, conjugation/transformation/transduction, genomic imprinting, and differential gene expression. Do you have any favorite online resources for studying these subjects? The more specific the better (i.e. a specific youtube playlist or a specific section of a website, rather than just a generally genetics related channel or site).
posted by ocherdraco to Education (3 answers total)

I have a graduate biology master's and have been taking a bunch of higher level online courses that also have computer science people who are learning biology for the first time this year. Honestly, I've been continually impressed with Wikipedia for its overviews of basic molecular biology (I've looked less at the genetics). Their page on the lac operon system looks pretty good to my eye, but may have more depth than your professor is testing on.

The other thing I might recommend is not a genetics textbook, but the (searchable, online) text of the 2002 edition of Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell. NCBI hosts it here; searching a few of your terms pulled up some good material, and the figures in that book are pretty good IMO.

It's hard to know how to point you without a sense of what your professor's like, though. Some profs test pretty heavily on examples or model systems covered during lecture, so for a broad topic like "differential gene expression" I feel like I could point you in a bunch of different interesting directions, but they could turn out to be really useless when it comes to exam review.
posted by deludingmyself at 4:26 PM on December 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'll second the recommendation of Alberts. A search for "operons" leads to The Molecular Genetic Mechanisms That Create Specialized Cell Types and How Genetic Switches Work.

If you want to dig a little deeper, review articles like this one, which you should have access to via your institution's library, might also be helpful for you.
posted by clawsoon at 4:39 PM on December 18, 2014

Response by poster: Alberts sounds perfect for my needs. My professor's material is more complicated than my textbook, but his slides are a mess, and this looks like it goes into the depth I need. Thank you!
posted by ocherdraco at 6:41 PM on December 18, 2014