Introduction to Bioinformatics
Abstract
An introductory lecture giving a brief outline of what bioinformatics entails, the role of bioinformatics in modern biological sciences research, and the tools that a bioinformatician must learn to analyse the large body of data generated from such research. This will be a 2 hour introductory session geared towards MSc students in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences.
The term “bioinformatics” can apply to a wide range of disciplines in the biological sciences, and the field lies at the interface between biology, statistics, mathematics and computer science. This lecture will give a brief insight into the importance of bioinformatics in the biological sciences, and in particular will focus on the rise of next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches for reading the sequences of large amounts of DNA and RNA molecules simultaneously. We will discuss varied uses for NGS technology, how the Illumina Sequencing by Synthesis platform works, some insight into data formats associated with NGS, and an introduction to some of the resources available to bioinformaticians. This session will be delivered by Dr. Sam Robson.