Emphasis is also placed on calculating the statistical significance of results. Protein structural alignments and displays, and structure prediction is covered. RNA structure prediction and RNA gene finding is also discussed. Gene prediction algorithms, methods of phylogenetic analysis, and database similarity searching are also explained. Most material is presented on web pages with a short orientation lecture at the start of the weekly 2.5 hr class period.
All work is performed using public internet resources.
Students complete weekly assignments to be submitted via the course web page. Local working directory space on a blc server will also be provided for each student. After the midterm exam, students will begin working on individual research projects that emphasize many of the methods discussed during the first half of the semester. Each graduate student reviews two current papers in bioinformatics and also works on a sequence analysis project of their own choice, handing in a report at the end of the semester. Students will need a calculator with both logarithmic and x y functions to complete weekly assignments and exams.