International course “Genome Biology and Biotechnology”
Prof. Dr. Marc Zabeau
Summary
The course provides an up to date overview of the genomics field and presents the
exciting new scientific discoveries that have emerged over the past five years from the
sequencing of eukaryotic genomes and large scale functional genomics studies. The
subject matter covers all eukaryotic life forms, fungi, animals, plant and human with the
exclusion of bacteria. The focus of the course is on the one hand on biology – a
perspective on biological diversity and evolution from the genetic programme encoded in
the genome – and on the one hand on biotechnology – applications of genome
technologies in human health care and agriculture. The subject matter is suited for PhD
students or last year students in a broad range of disciplines: biologists, agricultural
engineers, medical doctors, pharmacists. The course comprises a total of 10 lectures of
one and a half hours.
Overview of the course.
 Genome technologies
The course starts with a brief overview of the two principal technologies in genomics,
genome sequencing and microarray technologies, and a basic introduction to
bioinformatics tools for genome analysis.
 Genome structure and evolution
This section reviews the structures of the ~35 eukaryotic genomes sequenced to date
and comprises 4 lectures. The particular emphasis is on comparative genome analysis
and genome evolution within the four different major eukaryotic life forms unicellular
organisms (yeasts, fungi and algae), invertebrates (worms and insects), vertebrates
(from fishes to mammals and the human) and flowering plants. The goal of this section
is to outline the new fundamental insights in the evolution of biodiversity emerging from
the analysis of their genomes: which factors are driving the evolution of life?
 Functional genome analysis
This section reviews the principal “omics” disciplines: the ORFeome (genes), the
Phenome (phenotypes), the transcriptome (transcribed elements and large scale
expression profiling) to the different proteomes: the DNA interactome, the localizome,
the interactome and the proteome itself and comprises 4 lectures. Each omics discipline
will be discussed from a technology and application perspective. The goal of this section
is to outline how large-scale biology contributes to our understanding of biology on the
one hand and to the development og biotechnology applications on the other hand.

Genome dynamics
In the concluding lecture we add a dynamic dimension to the static view of genomes and
review the dynamics of the genome structure in on the one hand the living cell
(chromatin structure and epigenetic control) and on the other hand in populations
(genetic variation and micro evolution).
Online access
The course is based on three courses lectured at the Universities of Brussels
“Genomics and Proteomics” and Gent “Genome Biology” and “Functional Genomics”. The
contents of the course – including the slides of the lectures, a printable PFD of each
lecture and the over 100 original research papers used - will be made available online.