IntroductionThis course is offered to biology students at both graduate and undergraduate levels. It will focus on how to use existing bioinformatics tools. The department offers another two bioinformatics courses: (i) BIOS443/643 covering the theoretical basis of bioinformatics algorithms/tools and (ii) BIOS646 covering computer programing for bioinformatics. Our course BIOS441/641 features practical hands-on skills in using various bioinformatics softwares, including web-based tools (using web browser), stand-alone tools with GUI (need no programming) and without GUI (use Linux terminal function and need bash programming). It emphasizes applications of computational tools to solve real biology problems (a lot of examples will be used in class). Students will work on two course projects and homework will be assigned every two or three lectures. Students may expect to learn to address the following questions: - How to fetch DNA or protein sequences, e.g. 200 proteins or 1000 bacterial genomes at a time, from NCBI?- What is Unix and Linux and how to access a remote Linux machine from a laptop or desktop PC? - How to work with Linux terminals? - How to install bioinformatics softwares using terminals? - How to run bioinfo tools e.g. BLAST in the Linux terminal? - How to do basic sequence analysis using bioinfo tools such as EMBOSS commands? - How to annotate a newly sequenced genomes? - How to analyze transcriptome data? and many more ... Schedule (subject to change during the semester) |