Introduction to Bioinformatics Week One

I am sitting here in my first day of my Introduction to Bioinformatics course at Metro's Sarpy campus. The class meets Monday afternoons from 1 to 5 pm. The instructor informed us that the format of the class is independent study and that we will meet and lecture for about an hour, and then the rest of the work is up to us. Homework and quizzes for each week are all due by 11:55 PM on the Sunday before the next class. Sweet! I could leave if I wanted to as 2 of the other 3 people in the class did, but it's easier to just sit here and complete the class work here.

I thought I'd use the blog to document my work and thoughts as I'm doing the work. We'll see how it goes.

The lecture today was a review of the Human Genome Project and DNA and RNA chemical structures and operations.

First up, a review of the Human Genome Project educational CD:

http://www.genome.gov/Pages/EducationKit/download.html

There is a ton of information here, not enough time to read it all. But while looking at the 1953 year in the timeline about Watson-Crick, I decided to go find their journal article online.

I happened across the following link:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-dna-structure-and-function-watson-397

It summarizes a broader length on the DNA timeline, and how all the pieces fit together.

Next up, a review of the Genome On-Line Database.

http://www.genomesonline.org/

A presentation about Gene Prediction, which soared way over my head about 10 pages into it ;-)

http://cbis.anu.edu.au/bioinfosummer-2003/tuesday/13h30-14h30_speed_keynote.ppt#4

A Science magazine article, "Realizing the Potential of the Genome Revolution: The Genomes to Life". This talks about...

The link is available to journal subscribers only, but here is the link anyway. I was able to access it via Metro's online library mechanism.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/300/5617/290.full.pdf

A phat flash presentation on contents of a cell:

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/insideacell/

1. Realizing the Potential of the Genome Revolution: The Genomes to Life: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/300/5617/290.full.pdf
2. Inside a Cell: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/insideacell/
3. Reverse and/or complement DNA sequences: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/labgc/adnan/projects/Utilities/revcomp.html
4. Tour of the Basics: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/tour/
5. Nova Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/program.html