Question

Has anyone watched Prof. Lander's 2004 lectures yet, and can tell me if a lot of the information there is already outdated? I'm currently watching the OCW Scholar Biology course, but it seems to me that Prof. Lander's 2004 lectures are more elaborate regarding certain topics. Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

I'm new to MIT OCW, but I have a BS in Physiology and have been doing diabetes research for the last 22 years. I am interested in this course, because I know very little about ubiquitination and want to learn more about it. The thing about science is, it marches on. I am betting that this information was pretty current in 2004, so the value depends on what your purpose is. If you already know a bit about it, maybe it is not of great value to you. If like me, you are exploring areas of science that you wish to know more about, then take this as a starting point. Once you have learned what you can, then on to PUBMED, or your local university library, for a search on ubiquitination 2004 to present. Then you can hone your knowledge and be as up to date as possible on the subject.

Answer 2

The 701SC lectures (and the course in general) is disappointing to me having watched all of the 2004 7.012 lectures. It's just too short and fluffy and does not delve into even the basic details you want to know. I think you can get much more out of the 2004 lectures honestly than the current 701SC.

The SC course shows a few excerpts from a fall 2011 7.012 with Eric Lander, and I HOPE, HOPE, HOPE, that they are going to release this whole set of lectures at some point as I would LOVE to see an updated version.

In any case, the 2004 lectures, and especially the ones done by Eric Lander, were the thing that really got me interested in modern biology. I have just been re-watching them and they are as exciting and mentally stimulating as ever. All of the material covered is still relevant today (I believe anyway) even through we now know lots more detail about things like epigenetics, etc. There really is nothing that you will learn in the 2004 series that you will need to "un-learn" as a result of new discoveries.

If anyone expressed to me an interest in biology, it is to these 2004 lectures that I would send them, and I think the most interesting sequence is to start with lecture 1, then skip to lecture 6 and proceed through 13, then do 15 through 18, and 25. And then finish whatever else sounds interesting and go back and do 2-5 if the chemistry interests you.

That series will give you the basics of genetics, all about how DNA->RNA->Protein, and all of the Recombinant DNA tools that are used to manipulate them, and this is all the central stuff in Molecular Biology, and it is presented in a very inspiring way by Lander and Weinberg and company.

Z.

Answer 3

First confessing that I have not watched the full lecture series on OCW, I think the basic concepts from any intro class in 2004 will still be current today. With the emphasis on 'introductory.'

The last eight years have been the dawn of high throughput sequencing. Some in my department (bioinformatics) would argue that this has not only provided hitherto only dreamed of insight into the fundamental and applied problems of biology (with some surprises) but also shifted the fundamental focuses and concepts of biology itself. And some of this might be filtering its way down into introductory biology - but in all candour, I think academia is too conservative in adapting its staid, tenured, ivy walled self to curricula in line with current sea changes in the field for that to really be the case. And MIT is the only institution in the world I would credit sight unseen with the foresight and common sense to update their intro and undergraduate curricula to stay in line with times.

But that is all neither here nor there. I think the 7.012 lectures are probably a very solid and current basis in introductory biology. Had biology changed that radically in the last eight years, I and all the other people with Ph.Ds in life science would have to go back to college ourselves.

Answer 4

I agree with what blues says, especially the danger that even a current course may not be based on material that's much more current than the MIT 2004 material.

Throughout the MIT 7.012 from 2004, the professors throw in facts from their current research, and Lander gives two lectures that are based entirely on up to that minute research actively going on. These are Lecture 25 on Genomics, and one of his last couple (I forget which). He is also able to say at one point that the paper on the complete Human Genome was actually published in Science that week, and says they'll get copies of the paper for all the students.

Z.

Answer 5

Thanks for your answers everyone! I tried to submit a request to release the whole set of Eric Lander's 2011 lecture series, but the contact form doesn't seem to work at the moment. I'll try again later. Maybe others who are interested in the series would like to do the same!