BIOL 353 - Bioinformatics

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as CMPU 353) DNA is the blueprint of life. Although it’s composed of only four nucleotide “letters” (A, C. T, G), the order and arrangement of these letters in a genome gives rise to the diversity of life on earth. Thousands of genomes have been partially sequenced, representing billions of nucleotides. How can we reach this vast expanse of sequence data to find patterns that provide answers to ecological, evolutionary, agricultural, and biomedical questions? Bioinformatics applies high-performance computing to discover patterns in large sequence datasets. In this class students from biology and computer science work together to formulate interesting biological questions and to design algorithms and computational experiments to answer them.

Prerequisites: BIOL 238, BIOL 244, or BIOL 248; CMPU 203; or permission of the instructor.

To register for this course students must satisfy either the biology or computer science prerequisites, but not both.

Two 2-hour periods.