I am looking for a comprehensive textbook in general genetics, to be used
with a course entitled "Intermediate Genetics". This course attempts
to revisit the material that students would get in a 1-semester
introductory course, but at greater depth.
Most Genetics programs of which I am aware have a single introductory
course, and then advanced courses in specific areas, such as Population,
Quantitative, Molecular, and Cytogenetics. We don't do it that way
here and I'd rather not debate the wisdom of that issue right now.
The point is, this the course that we have to offer. Unfortunately, most
of the genetics texts of which I am aware are designed specifically for
one semester courses, and are therefore pretty shallow in each area.
In particular, the mathmatical aspects of genetics are usually breezed
over. Specifically, I am thinking of
Suzuki et al. INTRODUCTION TO GENETIC ANALYSIS
Russel GENETICS
Gardner et al. PRINCIPLES OF GENETICS
We have been using Strickberger, GENETICS, which certainly fills the bill
in terms of mathmatical depth, but the most recent (3rd) edition is from
1985, and in my opinion, was 10 years behind the times when it was written.
The main reason for sticking with this book for so long has been the in
depth treatment Strickberger gives to the practical aspects of Mendalian
genetics eg. dominance relationships, detection of linkage, calculation
of linkage intensity, linkage from F2 data, genetics of aneuploidy and
so forth. The downside of this approach is that I have had to update just
about everything else by supplementing the readings in the text with
other material. This ends up being confusing for the students, and has been
an enormous amount of work for me.
A book I really like is Ayala & Kiger, MODERN GENETICS, but as far as I
know the most recent edition is from 1980. The particular strengths of
this book lie in population genetics and evolution, but again, for our
purposes, it doesn't cover Mendelian and quantitative genetics in
enough mathematical depth.
Does anybody out there teach a similar course? Do you know of a
text that fits our criteria?
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Brian Fristensky |
Department of Plant Science | Six days shall thou work,
University of Manitoba | and do all thou art able
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 CANADA | The seventh the same
frist at ccu.umanitoba.ca | and clean out the stable
Office phone: 204-474-6085 |
FAX: 204-261-5732 |
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