Introduction to Genomics

A 'genome' is a single set of genetic information of a given individual, which is encoded by the nucleotide sequence of the DNA. For instance, the human genome consists of around 3 billion nucleotide base pairs, although the size and content of the genome differs greatly across species and individuals. Some species such as the budding yeast has a genome as small as 12 million base pairs, whereas other species such as Paris japonica, a flowering plant native to the sub-alpine regions of Japan, is said to have a genome as large as 150 billion base pairs. In this talk, I will give a introduction of what kind of information is contained within a genome, and how that differs across species and individuals.

This talk will be introductory and aimed at non-experts including non-biologists.