BIOI 2000 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOINFORMATICS (3 credits)
Bioinformatics is a new scientific discipline that integrates mathematical and computational techniques with biological knowledge to develop and use computational tools to extract, organize and interpret information from genetic sequence data. The field is growing quickly due to rapid advances in sequencing and other biological techniques that allow the genomes of different organisms to be easily sequenced. This course provides an overview of the field and covers the chemical, biological, mathematical and computational foundations of bioinformatics upon which later courses will depend. In addition, it introduces problems of interest to bioinformaticians and the methods and tools used to address them.