The Department of Biology/Toxicology at Ashland University began offering a new course in evolution in Fall of 2009. This course is listed as Bio 480 Special Topics: Evolution, and will likely be taught every other year. The course relies heavily on readings from the primary literature, and includes student presentations and guest lecturers from local Universities.

This is a team-taught course focusing on special topics in each faculty member’s area of specialty. Faculty and topics this year were:

Dr. Soren Brauner
Darwin and early influences
Natural selection
Fossil evidence and Biogeography
Chromosome repatterning, polyploidy and plant evolution
Comparative genomics

Dr. Mason Posner
Phylogeny reconstruction
Biochemical adaptation and physiological evolution
Embryology and evolution
Evolutionary development

Dr. Andrew Greene
Horizontal gene transfer
Pathogenesis -Evolution of Yersinia pestis
Antibiotic resistance - The rise of VRSA
Viral evolution - SARS and influenza
Endosymbiosis and mutualism
Epigenetic inheritance

Faculty and students traveled to a local talk by
evolutionary developmental biologist Dr. Sean Carroll
carrol