DNA

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 [...]

You have all heard about the DNA double helix and genes. Many of you know that mutations occur randomly, that the DNA sequence is read by successive groups of three bases (the codons), that many genes encode enzymes, and that gene expression can be regulated. These concepts were proposed [...]

How have advances in genetics affected society? What do we need to know to make ethical decisions about genetic technologies? This course includes the study of cloning, genetic enhancement, and ownership of genetic information. Course participants will acquire the tools to explore the ethics of modern genetics and learn [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

We will learn computational methods -- algorithms and data structures -- for analyzing DNA sequencing data. We will learn a little about DNA, genomics, and how DNA sequencing is used. We will use Python to implement key algorithms and data structures and to analyze real genomes and DNA sequencing [...]

This course introduces you to the basic biology of modern genomics and the experimental tools that we use to measure it. We'll introduce the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology and cover how next-generation sequencing can be used to measure DNA, RNA, and epigenetic patterns. You'll also get an introduction [...]

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. [...]

We have all seen forensic scientists in TV shows, but how do they really work? What is the science behind their work? The course aims to explain the scientific principles and techniques behind the work of forensic scientists and will be illustrated with numerous case studies from Singapore and [...]