Introduction to Bioinformatics

Introduction to Bioinformatics, CISC436/636

Fall, 2012

Instructor: Dr. Hagit Shatkay

Office: Smith 416 Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3:30-4:30pm (or by appt.)

Meeting times:

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00-12:15, Gore Hall 306

TA: Ashwani Rao, ashwani AT udel.edu
TA hours: Mondays and Wednesdays: 5-6PM, Smith 103.

Overview

Recent innovative biomedical technologies, which enabled - for instance - the sequencing of the human genome (and of multiple other species), give rise to tremendous amounts of new biomedical data. The hope is that careful analysis of such data can lead to significant biological and medical discoveries, and ultimately to prediction and prevention of disease. However, given the wealth of data, deciphering and interpreting it cannot be done manually. Advanced computational tools are required to expedite analysis, expose patterns in the data that may not be readily visible through manual analysis, and enable large-scale studies that were not possible before. Bioinformatics and Computational Biology are the disciplines concerned with the development and the application of such tools.

The course provides an introduction to some of the fundamental concepts, and the most common computational methods and tools applied in the biological domain. As the course assumes no previous background in biology, it will start with an introduction to the essential biological concepts, and will then discuss a variety of computational methods and their application in biology.

Course Syllabus and Grading Policies

Tentative Schedule

Prerequisites

CISC220 (Data Structures).

Textbook

Primary Textbook
Introduction to Computational Molecular Biology , by C. Setubal and J. Meidanis . PWS Publishing, 1st Ed. 1997.

Also Recommended
Biological Sequence Analysis by R. Durbin, S. Eddy, A. Krogh, G. Mitchison . Cambridge University Press, 1st Ed. 1998.
(A few copies reserved in the library, QP620 .B576)

Note: We shall neither cover all of the material in the primary book, nor use it exclusively. Additional material will be distributed and used throughout the course. Some of it will be distributed as handouts in class. The rest will be available online, from the Course Schedule page.