Intro to MedGen

(c) Hybrid Medical Animation

I enjoy talking about Medical Genetics and at my local medical school, I have a good reputation for helping out novice or anxious students. One student calls me the ‘genetics whisperer’ and another was nice enough to call me a ‘genetics goddess’.  On their request – and they buttered me up so well – I’m going to try and reproduce my workshops and lectures.I normally give two to three hour workshops but for the blog format, I will try to do one concept per post. I’ll move around a bit to keep it interesting (chromosomes one week and single gene inheritance another). After we have some of the basics covered, I’ll add some practice questions.

There will be four sections:

• chromosomes: translocations, nondisjunction, anaphase lag – you can’t wait, I know
• inheritance patterns: Punnett Squares, (mainly) single gene disorders and all kinds of fun!
• cancer genetics: tumour suppressors, oncogenes, and perhaps some pharmacogenomics
• questions: try this at home practice questions – you know you want to try it

As I get ready to start these topics, I realize that I could use some help

I can’t draw – do you have suggestions for the best way to reproduce pedigrees, simple chromosomes, etc?

How do I show working through a problem? I don’t want to take a video of me at a board. Would a screencast work? Do you have other suggestions?

Thanks for any and all suggestions!