BIOL 59500M Practical Biocomputing

Sessions Offered:

Prerequisites:

BIOL 23100 or 27000 and BIOL 24100 or 28000. May not be enrolled as the following classifications: Freshman 0-14 hours, Freshman 15-29 hours, Sophomore 30-44 hours and Sophomore 45-59 hours.

Instructor(s):

Michael R. Gribskov

Textbook(s):

~No textbook required for this course~

Notes:

Content:

Electronic resources and high-throughput technologies are transforming biology; becoming a "power use" of these resources is essential for all graduate students in biology today.  Unfortunately, these resources are often incomplete (requiring various sources to be combined), massive (making it difficult to find the specific information one is seeking) or in the wrong format (making them difficult to use).  This course will teach how to use the Perl programming language to find and retrieve information, to develop user-agents to process information using new and existing programs, how to create relational databases for storing information, and how to make information available via dynamic websites.
This course is designed for beginning graduate students in the life sciences, but would be a useful addition of most biology undergraduate majors.  Prior computer programming experience is not required.