Collaborative? Collaborate with whom? How?
Perhaps there are those who seek out ancient tombs, break them open, and after comprehending what is inside, destroy the contents, so that their eyes may be the only ones to have seen such wonders. We'll define such pathological cases to be outside of science. Instead, science is inherently collaborative, with each individual practitioner generally working on a piece of a puzzle that can be seen more clearly when the pieces are put together. Each of you will be given your own sequence to puzzle over, but research is much more enjoyable when you are in contact with your colleagues working on similar pieces as your own. Although We may at times pay visits to outside researchers also interested in the puzzle, your most immediate colloborators will be your colleagues in class who will be given related sequences and use related tools, particularly BioBIKE.

BioBIKE? What's that?
BioBIKE (Biological Integrated Knowledge Environment) is designed to provide biologists with no computer programming experience the opportunity to access and manipulate mass data creatively. It is also the programming language we will use in this course as a teaching tool and as the primary tool in the collaborative research projects.

Research project? About what?
From centuries of research and a decade of genome sequencing projects, we know a great deal of the plants, animals, and bacteria that compose the biosphere. But lump all of those organisms together, and you still won't come close to the number of viruses on earth. And of this group, we know shockingly little. You and your collaborators will begin a global project to identify and comprehend the diversity of viruses on earth.

Most of your effort will be focused on analyzing and making sense out of viral genomes. The greater task will be figuring out the right questions to ask.