edX/MITis offering a free online course called Molecular Biology - Part 1: DNA Replication and Repair.
From the course description:
You’re acquainted with your DNA, but did you know that your cells synthesize enough DNA during your lifetime to stretch a lightyear in length? How does the cellular machinery accomplish such a feat without making more mistakes than you can survive? Why isn’t the incidence of cancer even higher than it is? And, if the DNA in each and every cell is two meters long, how is this genetic material compacted to fit inside the cell nucleus without becoming a tangled mess?
What you’ll learn:
- How to compare and contrast the mechanisms of DNA replication in prokaryotes and eukaryotes
- How to describe several enzymatic mechanisms that the cell uses to repair or tolerate DNA damage
- How to analyze protein structures to infer functional information
- How to design methods for the best experiment to test a hypothesis related to DNA replication or repair proteins
- How to interpret data from DNA replication and repair experiments
The instructors are MIT professors who are also HHMI investigators. Not too shabby, right?
The course starts April 4, 2017. Sign up and/or learn more by clicking on the link.
(Looking at some of the comments here, it seems that this course is just what is needed!)