Overview
Applied bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that deals with applying computational tools for processing, analyzing, and interpreting biological data. This course is designed to teach the underlying concepts of bioinformatics tools and their algorithms and apply them to carry out biologically meaningful analyses. The course will merge theory with practical, hands-on analyses for an experientially trained bioinformatician.
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to
- explain the objectives and principles of bioinformatics data analysis.
- learn and apply specific subfields of bioinformatics.
- recognize the caveats and issues, and work around them.
- design a bioinformatics workflow for analyzing and understanding biological data.
- conduct bioinformatics data analysis to address a real-life biological question.
Evaluation
To receive credit for BIOL 625, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least B- (70 percent) and a grade of at least 50 percent on each assignment and the final project.
The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
| Activity | Weight |
| Explore More Activities (Top 5 scoring) | 25% |
| Quizzes (Top 5 scoring) | 25% |
| Assignment 1: Project Proposal | 10% |
| Assignment 2: Initial Project Submission | 25% |
| Assignment 3: Final Project: Revised Submission | 15% |
| Bonus Credit: Manuscript-style Submission | (5%) |
| Total | 100% |
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Kellis, M. (Ed.). (2016). Computational biology: Genomes, networks, evolution. MIT OpenCourseWare.
Hendrix, D. A. (2019). Applied bioinformatics of nucleic acid sequences (1st ed.). Oregon State University.