Introductory Bioinformatics

This course is designed to cover an introductory level overview of bioinformatics. It covers commonly used bioinformatics tools and algorithms as well as standard formats, with the focus on DNA/RNA sequence and sequencing data analysis. The topics include sequence alignment, motif detection, conservation analysis, Markov models, short-read sequencing data alignment, variant detection and visualization, peak calling, clustering methods, standard formats, random access tools, and performance analysis. Web-based tools and databases are also covered. Pipeline development frameworks and cloud-based approaches are discussed briefly. This course does not include artificial intelligence or machine learning techniques or theoretical analysis of algorithms. Programming is not the focus of the course, but students are welcome to apply their programming skills to the course material.