Objectives of course

1. Understand how bioinformatics lets us view biology in a new light

"Introduction to Bioinformatics"... You've no doubt taken many courses called Introduction to X where you've learned the basic concepts of X, enabling you to move on to Advanced X. You have a pretty good idea what X is going into the course, perhaps through colleagues who are X majors or a high school X course or perhaps even a hard-hitting TV show with a dashing Xologist as the main character.

That's fine when X is a mature field with a well-defined body of knowledge.
X is not bioinformatics.

Some courses focus on how to use state-of-the-art (also known as soon-to-be-extinct) tools.
Not this one.

Some focus on the timeless precepts behind bioinformatic tools.
That's a different course.

We will focus instead on something you can take away and use now and twenty years from now: the viewpoint of bioinformatics. The only way I know to help you grasp that viewpoint is to put you in a situation where you're using bioinformatics within an actual scientific project. So that's what we'll do.

Much of the first half of the course will be devoted to getting you to a position where you can work productively on the Project, which will occupy most of your time the second half of the course.

2. Computer programming, the most basic tool