CTS 505 - Introduction to Bioinformatics

The new bioinformatics course (CTS 505) serves as an introductory exploration into the fundamental principles, algorithms, and practical application of bioinformatics in hypothesis-driven research spanning basic and translational domains. The curriculum encompasses key protein and nucleotide alignment algorithms like BLAST and Smith-Waterman, essential public databases, RNA biology, and various approaches for DNA and RNA sequencing. Important concepts of bioinformatics, such as differential gene expression, functional enrichment analysis, genome assembly, and gene discovery will be introduced. Additionally, the course will cover the utilization of the open-source statistical computing language R for numerous bioinformatics analyses, along with an overview of Linux-based operating systems utilized in high-performance computing (HPC) environments. This will equip students to conduct their own analyses on both HPC systems and personal laptops.