An On-line Undergraduate Medical Genetics Laboratory

Traditional laboratories in medical genetics pose didactic problems. It is difficult to find adequate samples, techniques involved may take many hours, equipement is expensive, samples may pose safety issues, and experiments can fail. Using original code to simulate lab techniques, plus freeware applications and real clinical data, we have prepared a free on-line course where students engage in making choices to solve diagnostic problems. The present version contains more than 100 problem cases in cytogenetics, pedigrees, DNA analysis and protein analysis. The course was tested on third year genetics students and their comments were encouraging.