bioinformatics

Overview The world and internet are full of textual information. We search for information using textual queries and read websites, books and e-mails. These are all strings from a computer science point of view. To make sense of all this information and make search efficient, search engines use...

Overview If you look at two genes that serve the same purpose in two different species, how can you rigorously compare these genes in order to see how they have evolved away from each other? In the first part of the course, part of the Algorithms and Data Structures MicroMasters program, we...

Overview In this course, part of the Algorithms and Data Structures MicroMasters program, you will learn how graph algorithms are used in two fundamental problems in modern biology: How do we sequence a genome? How do we construct an evolutionary “Tree of Life?" In the first part of the...

COURSE DESCRIPTION You may have heard a lot about genome sequencing and its potential to usher in an era of personalized medicine, but what does it mean to sequence a genome? Biologists still cannot read the nucleotides of an entire genome as you would read a book from beginning to end...

COURSE DESCRIPTION Once we have sequenced genomes in the previous course, we would like to compare them to determine how species have evolved and what makes them different. In the first half of the course, we will compare two short biological sequences, such as genes (i.e., short sequences of...

COURSE DESCRIPTION In the previous course in the Specialization, we learned how to compare genes, proteins, and genomes. One way we can use these methods is in order to construct a "Tree of Life" showing how a large collection of related organisms have evolved over time. In the first half of...

COURSE DESCRIPTION How do we infer which genes orchestrate various processes in the cell? How did humans migrate out of Africa and spread around the world? In this class, we will see that these two seemingly different questions can be addressed using similar algorithmic and machine learning...

COURSE DESCRIPTION In previous courses in the Specialization, we have discussed how to sequence and compare genomes. This course will cover advanced topics in finding mutations lurking within DNA and proteins. In the first half of the course, we would like to ask how an individual's genome...

COURSE DESCRIPTION In this course, you will learn how to use the BaseSpace cloud platform developed by Illumina (our industry partner) to apply several standard bioinformatics software approaches to real biological data. In particular, in a series of Application Challenges will see how genome...