Abstract: Faced with the important task of cultivating top-notch innovative talents in basic disciplines, our teaching team, building upon the excellent teaching traditions of our predecessors, launched an advanced honor course in genetics titled “genetics (H)” in 2018. This course served as the driving force for reform, aiming to explore the cultivation mode and reform path for top-notch innovative talents in the field of genetics. The teaching reform and practice were implemented progressively in four levels. Firstly, the knowledge system of the genetics course was reconstructed, with the scientific thinking of genetic analysis serving as the link throughout all chapters of the course, ensuring the systematicness and coherence of the knowledge system. Secondly, a blended teaching reform combining online and offline methods was carried out. Teaching design and practice were aligned with the principle of “objective-activity-assessment” consistency, effectively cultivating students’ active learning methods and improving learning outcomes. Thirdly, case-based teaching was flexibly employed, with carefully selected examples from the history of disciplinary development and the forefront of academic progress serving as teaching cases. This focused on cultivating students’ abilities to pose, analyze, and solve problems. Finally, the theoretical course was closely integrated with the experimental course and research training, stimulating research interest, strengthening research training, and effectively promoting the enhancement of students’ academic innovation capabilities. After years of development, the team has achieved remarkable results in the three aspects of course learning, thinking cultivation, and research training, effectively serving the cultivation of top-notch talents in biology.

Key words: basic disciplines, cultivation of top talents, genetics, honor course, teaching reform