Bioinformatics
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine M.E:800.707

This seven-lecture course begins Friday November 17, 2006 (West Lecture Hall). It is a core course in the BCMB. All graduate students and postdocs enrolled in the School of Medicine are also welcome to attend.
Description
The use of computers has revolutionized biological research. This BCMB core course provides an introduction to bioinformatics, the combined field of biology and informatics (information science and technology). The course focuses on the analysis of proteins, genes, and genomes.
Prerequisites
None. Students may sign up with the Registrar's Office (School of Medicine) to take the course for credit. Auditors (including postdoctoral fellows) are welcome but are requested to register.
Format
West Lecture Hall, Wood Basic Science Building, given 9:00-10:30 a.m. on the dates indicated below. There are seven lectures plus one in-class exam. You are encouraged to bring a laptop to class (this is optional). Wireless is available.
Instructor
J. Pevsner (443-923-2686; pevsner@jhmi.edu). My office is 400-D Kennedy Krieger.
Textbook
None is required. I have written a textbook that is based on the lectures given in this course: J. Pevsner, Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). Several copies will be on reserve at Welch Library (reference desk), where you can sign them out for several hours at a time. If you choose, you can order the book through the Matthews Johns Hopkins Medical Book Center (i.e. the bookstore) or at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Website for textbook: http://www.bioinfbook.org.
Readings
One or two published papers will be assigned for each class. PDFs are posted below.
Moodle site!!!
Visit the moodle site to take seven quizzes (one per lecture) and get class information! For each lecture, there will be a take-home, open-book, unlimited time quiz. The quizzes are designed to test your understanding of the material, and/or for you to go to a computer and apply what you have learned in each lecture (for example, after the BLAST lecture you will do a BLAST search; after the phylogeny lecture you will make a phylogenetic tree). Each quiz will be available via moodle the day of its lecture, and you will typically have one week to complete it.
Grading
40% of grade is based on the final exam. 60% of grade is based on your best six scores from seven quizzes (one quiz per lecture, taken via the moodle site).
Course sponsors
Thanks to: The Kennedy Krieger Institute and Welch Medical Library, Division of Biomedical Information Sciences
Related courses of interest
Introduction to Bioinformatics (260.602.01)(September/October each year ).
Genomics (260.605.01); this newly-offered course immediately follows Introduction to Bioinformatics and covers the tree of life. Offered November/December each year.
—Analysis of Biological Sequences (140.638.01) 2nd term, 3 units.
—Biocomputing I: Perl for bioinformatics (140.636.01) 2nd term.
—Protein bioinformatics (260.841.01) 4th term.

Please note that the powerpoints and pdfs are posted on the moodle site.

Monday Wednesday Friday
November 13
November 15 November 17
1. Introduction to bioinformatics
Optional reading: Benson et al. (2005)
Monday, November 20
2. Pairwise alignment
Optional reading: Needleman and Wunsch (1970).

Wed., November 22
3. BLAST
Reading: Altschul et al. (1990)

Friday, November 24

Monday, November 27
4. Gene expression: microarrays
Reading: Barrett et al. (2005)

November 29
5. Protein analysis and proteomics

Friday, December 1
6.
Multiple sequence alignment
Reading: Thompson ClustalW
Optional reading: Feng and Doolittle (1987)

Monday, December 4
7. Molecular phylogeny and evolution
Reading: Tree-thinking (2005)
Reading: MEGA3 (2004)
Wednesday, December 6 Friday, December 8
Final exam (in class)

 

This page was updated November 16, 2006