Bioinformatics

Description

Data is everywhere. Due to the enormous decrease in sequencing costs and the technical ease by which sequences can be determined, biomolecular research is becoming swamped by a deluge of data. You will need to make sense of it all, and this is where information technology comes into play. Besides storing and managing data – an achievement in itself – it is also necessary to share and compare the sequences to reveal ‘invisible’ patterns of similarities and differences, the biological relevance of sequence variants, and the evolution mechanisms underlying the enormous sequence variation that unites and distinguishes all life forms. Although bioinformatics itself is a scientific discipline that combines mathematics, information sciences, and biology, in this course we will primarily focus on the practical part, asking the following questions: ‘What can I actually learn from this sequence?’ and ‘How on earth should I begin?’