Phillip Compeau

Are you interested in learning how to program (in Python) within a scientific setting? This course will cover algorithms for solving various biological problems along with a handful of programming challenges helping you implement these algorithms in Python.

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 differs from the "reference [...]

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.

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 DNA) or [...]

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. [...]

This course begins a series of classes illustrating the power of computing in modern biology. Please join us on the frontier of bioinformatics to look for hidden messages in DNA without ever needing to put on a lab coat. In the first half of the course, we investigate DNA [...]

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 techniques arising from the [...]

Synthesize your knowledge of algorithms and biology to build your own software for solving a biological challenge. Building a fully-fledged algorithm to assemble genomes from DNA fragments on a real dataset is an enormous challenge with major demand in the multi-billion dollar biotech industry. In this capstone project, we [...]

Learn how graphs are used to assemble millions of pieces of DNA into a contiguous genome and use these genomes to construct a Tree of Life.

Learn how dynamic programming and Hidden Markov Models can be used to compare genetic strings and uncover evolution. 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 [...]