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(BIOL 330) Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics introduces students to the concepts and applications of sequence-based bioinformatics research across several broad topic areas including Unix/Linux and the command line; massively parallel sequencing; applications of massively parallel sequencing including genomics, functional genomics, metagenomics, sequence assembly, and sequence similarity. From a biological perspective, the main considerations and applications of the computational tools used in each of these subject areas are discussed. Team projects where students work within groups to apply bioinformatic tools introduced in class to an experimental datasets supplements lecture materials.

Credit hours 3.0 lecture
Prerequisites BIOL 100 or BIOL 112
Offered Winter
Programs Biology (BS)

Course Learning Outcomes

  1. Describe the foundational principles underlying nucleic acid sequence-based bioinformatics.
  2. Navigate a Unix/Linux file system, execute basic commands through the command line, and make use of public web and file-based resources.
  3. Explain the principles of DNA sequencing and standard sequence file types in its analysis.
  4. Assess a selection of standard sequence-based bioinformatic tools, and discuss the advantages, assumption sand limitations to their use.
  5. Design and execute appropriate bioinformatics analyses to answer a relevant biological question.