The International Milk Genomics Research Project: Online Course

The promise of a revolution in life science knowledge, research and applications is now ongoing. The generation of students being educated must emerge with a clear understanding not only of what genomics is but what genomics means to each of their respective disciplines. As a practical consequence, learning genomics will be best accomplished by orienting the principles and applications directly to the students’ choice of career path.

For students studying human genomics and pursuing careers in pharmacology and applied medicine, or alternatively studying bacterial genomics and pursuing careers in bacteriology, the course materials are in place and relevent to these fields. However for students pursuing careers in nutrition and food science, there are not suitable course materials and relevant examples currently available. This lack of resources provides an unusual opportunity for the Milk Genomics Project to step forward and establish a course program in the area of Genomics and Nutrition and Food, using the milk genome as the basis for illustrative examples.
The milk literature already contains examples of modern genomic science. The gene sequences, chromosomal mapping, regulatory sequences and transcriptional processing sequences are known for the caseins and several other important milk genes as a result of decades of research into their respective proteins. These genes are present and well annotated on the major databases of sequence structure and function (SwissProt etc,) readily available using consensus tools (BLAST etc.) and known across a variety of comparative mammalian species. The relationships between sequence, structure and various functions have been developed for several milk proteins (lactoferrin, beta-lactoglobulin) and again fully annotated in the major databases. In fact, beta-lactoglobulin has served as a sequence structure function model for the identification of an entire eukaryotic gene family (FABP). The milk genome is large enough to provide a statistically valid database suitable for bioinformatic analyses, but small enough to allow comparisons to more traditional analysis and imaging protocols. The milk genome is composed of highly relevant and biologically important genes and is presumably largely devoid of the redundant, nonfunctional or silenced genes that represent a substantial fraction of entire eukaryotic genomes including the human.

Students now must acquire the knowledge of genomics as the basis of their entire future careers in biology. The speed that they become proficient at using genomics will depend on how relevant their course material is to their chosen career path. The genes of milk represent the ideal biological model for the discovery process of genomics for students embarking on careers in food, nutrition and related academic and industrial positions.