BIOL 313 - Introduction to Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

(3.00)

This is an introductory course to the field of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, an emerging interdisciplinary field dealing with the application of computing methods in biology. The course will provide a brief introduction to contemporary molecular biology and evolutionary theory. It will introduce the concept of bioinformatics, its applications and its career opportunities. Applying a question-answer approach, it will then explore some of the main problems faced by biology in the last decades (such as genome sequencing and annotation or sequence-based search) and it will analyze in depth some of the computational methods provided by the emerging field of Bioinformatics. Lecture content will be complemented with home based assignments. No prior programming skills or biology knowledge are strictly required, but students are expected to have basic knowledge in either molecular biology or algorithmic techniques, and to acquire complementary knowledge within the course. The course is intended for a multidisciplinary audience with an emphasis on BINF, CMSC, BIOL, MATH, STAT and IS majors.

Components: Lecture
Course Equivalents: BIOL 295
Requirement Group: You must complete MATH 151 or MATH 151H with a grade of C or better.