About this Course
Are you interested in analyzing biological datasets but don’t have a strong computational background? Do you want to focus on the biology and learn how to use modern best-practice pipelines that use existing tools? This introductory course, geared towards non-computational biologists, will introduce a specific biological problem each week centered around next generation sequencing and teach you how to use Illumina’s BaseSpace platform to run workflows conveniently and in a user-friendly manner. You will learn current best-practice workflows for Genome Assembly, Variant Calling, Trio Analysis, and Differential Expression Analysis as well as the types of biological problems that motivate them.
What You'll Learn
- How to reconstruct a genome by stringing together its tiny fragments using popular genome assembly tools to sequence a pathogen
- How to find mutations in your genome and how to test whether they are linked to genetic diseases.
- Investigate the genetic makeup of a "trio" (mother, father, and child) to figure out whether the child inherited the disease from the parents or unluckily developed the genetic disease through de novo mutations
- How to analyze gene expressions
- How to investigate what genes are turned on or off in various tissues in order to figure out which genes are important for each cell type and which genes are over-expressed in cancer and other diseases.
Prerequisites
- A basic biological understanding of the Central Dogma
Instructors
Pavel Pevzner
Ronald R. Taylor Professor of Computer Science
Phillip Compeau
Assistant Teaching Professor
Niema Moshiri
Ph. D. Student