Bioinformatics
Phylogeny
Genomics
Practicals
Bioinformatics is an emerging interdisciplinary area of research that stick great promises for the advancement of research & development in multiple domains like Biology, Enviroment, Medicine, Agriculture, Drug design etc. In simple words, it is nothing, but an integration of multiple fields that combines biology, computer science, and statistics to analyze and interpret biological data. This course offers comprehensive knowledge of the methods, principles and tools that are equipped with the skills necessary to target complex biological problems using multiple computational tools. If we look at its core, this domain uses computational methods to solve variety of biological problems at various levels including molecular, cellular to organismal scales.
Bioinformatics encompasses a wide range of biological data types like DNA sequence stretches, gene expression profiles, metabolic pathways to protein structures. By fusing computational mehods with biological systems, this domain enables scholar to gain insights into fundamental biological processes that further helps in understanding the mechanism of diseases and innovating novel therapeutic strategies. If we talk about bioinformatics course, it covers almost all sets of topics begining from foundational biology concepts to genomics and moleuclar biology. Students enrolled in this domain generally learns about the structure and functions of biological objects, central dogma of life, mechanisms underlying genetic makeups and inheritance. This domains helps in building up the theoretical foundation which further provides the core understanding of how computaional tools can be accomodate with biological data.
As the course progresses, candidates dive into the computational core of bioinformatics including programming languages, developing algorithms, understanding data structures etc. The candidate will learn about how to manipulate and work with biological data, sequence comparision & alignment, protein structure – structure comparision and functions, and also constructing phylogenetic trees of multiple taxon to predict evolutionary relationships. Practicals in this course commonly deals with hands on experience with bioinformatics tools and visualization softwares which helps in enhancing the core of interpretation and data analysis.
Moreover, Bioinformatics course is often oriented to the use of statistical algorithms in analyzing biological objects which further draws meaningful conclusions. Students in this course usually work to solve biological problems using statistical techniques and correlate genetic variations. Understanding statistical principles helps candidate to assure the significance of thier findings and make informed interpretations based on experimental evidences. In addition to technical skills, this course also focuses on problem solving along with critical thinking.
This course is designed for the candidates who are pursuing undergraduate or post graduate programme in bioinformatics or related fields of life sciences which explains the basics of bioinformatics along with its intersecting areas. The course represents multiple topics based on multiple universities syllabus. Now let us look briefly at some of the topics which are included hollistically in this course one by one.
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- Introduction to Bioinformatics
- Biological Databases and Data retrieval
- Alignment (Sequence alignments)
- Phylogeny
- Genomics
- Practicals including working with biological objects such as DNA, RNA and Proteins (Sequences & Structures).