The scientific community celebrated the achievement of the Human Genome Project's major goal in April of this year: completion of a high-accuracy sequence of the human genome. The significance of this milestone cannot be underestimated, as it firmly marks the entrance of modern biology into the genomic era (and not the post-genomic era, as many have stated). The intelligent use of sequence data from human and model organisms, along with technological innovations fostered by the Human Genome Project, will lead to significant advances in our understanding of diseases that have a genetic basis and, more importantly, in how health care is delivered from this point forward.

Given the rapid advances in genomics and bioinformatics that have taken place in the past few years, we feel that an intensive review of the major areas of ongoing genome research would be of great value to our fellow NIH investigators. To that end, the National Human Genome Research Institute is pleased to once again sponsor the Current Topics in Genome Analysis lecture series.

The series consists of 13 sessions on successive Tuesdays, with a mixture of local and outside speakers covering the major areas of genomics. In this fifth edition of the course, rather than splitting the lectures into "laboratory-based" and "computationally-based" blocks, we have intermingled the lectures by general subject area. We hope that this approach better conveys the idea that both laboratory- and computationally-based approaches are necessary in order to do cutting-edge biological research in the future.

The lectures are geared at the level of first year graduate students, are practical in nature, and are intended for a diverse audience. Handouts and reference lists will be provided for each lecture, and ample time will be available at the end of each lecture for questions and discussion.

Course Directors:

Andy Baxevanis, Ph.D.
Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D.
Tyra Wolfsberg, Ph.D.

Please direct any questions regarding the course to Dr. Baxevanis (andy@nhgri.nih.gov).