Introduction to Bioinformatics

Catalog description

Instructional Method: Three hours lecture. Prerequisites: A grade of “C” or better in BIOL 229 , BIOL 132 , BIOL 231 , and BIOL 232 ; or a grade of “C” or better in BIOL 111 , BIOL 112 , and BIOL 222 ; or permission of the instructor. This course will provide a broad introduction to bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is a field that lies at the interface of biology, statistics, and computer science. The purpose of Bioinformatics is to analyze very large datasets and interpret the results in a biological framework. It often relies on scripting (writing computer code), which is the implementation of algorithms in a chosen programming language. Topics will include: basic genetics, open-source biosequence databases and search tools, sequence alignment algorithms, introductory genomic and transcriptomic analysis, gene annotation, and basic coding skills.