This is the syllabus for I519 Bioinformatics. It should viewed only as a tentative schedule of events directed by both me and you. I'm hoping to have the most fun in some time teaching this class; it will be a roller coaster ride of thinking, reading, writing, and problem solving. Our goal is three-fold: (1) to understand the particular basics of bioinformatics through formalisms, (2) to learn to problem biological or algorithmic problems in a bioinformatics' setting;l (3) to expose you to new opportunities, applications that are arising daily. This is a difficult class for several reasons--chiefly because nobody has all the background he or she needs to understand all of bioinformatics; therefore, you should understand your strengths and use those against your weaknesses. Unlike other discinplines too, bioinformatics is relatively young--and so is still settling into what it is supposed to be. You'll find a host of interpretations as you being work in this area. The core faculty of Mehmet Dalkilic (me), Sun Kim, Predrag Radivojac, Matt Hahn, and Yuzhen Ye are always available to work with you. We have added to our ranks Esfan Haghverdi who is a refugee from logic and mathematics. You'll be using two URLs--one linked from my webpage and oncourse too. My webpage will have assignments and solutions, some notes; oncourse, will have notes to the Associate Instructor (who hasn't been assigned at the moment)
The course will involve a lot of reading, problem solving, and developing your skills. Programming, algorithms, etc are very unforgiving in syntactic errors and you'll have some fun playing dectective in what's going wrong. A graduate class is very different from an undergraduate class in another respect--we do
MEETING TIMES
INFO-I 519 INTRODUCTION TO BIOINFORMATICS (3 CR)
18558 10:10A-11:15A MW I107
ABOVE CLASS MEETS WITH INFO-I 617
Laboratory (LAB)
18559 10:10A-11:25A F I109- http://registrar.indiana.edu/time_sensitive/finalexamsche4088.shtml
GRADESGrades are rather easily determined--you participate in the journey, you'll do well; you simply watch and you will not. I know students prefer the formula for a semseter's grade to be readily apparent, though I cannot understand really why), the following should suffice:
Participation
(0.2)
Homework 10
(0.45)
Exam I
(0.1) held on Thursday, September 25, 2008
Exam II
(0.1) held on Thursday, October 30, 2008
Final
(0.15) 12:30-2:30 p.m., Friday December 19 [notice time change]
This means the focus should be on homework; however, no participation will affect your grade.
CHEATINGA nasty topic with even nastier consequences. I am linking you to the student's ethics handbook. There are few aberrations in life: crossword puzzles, self-check out at grocery stores, mowing lawns, and having to deal with students who find the lure of cheating worth the gamble of consequences. At best, you don't get caught and have not learned anything; at worst, you receive an academic F, much like the A in the Scarlett letter that will plague you for too long for you to understand. Under no circumstances will cheating be tolerated. The minimum will be an F for the assignment--the maximum removal from the class and loss of funding.
HOMEWORKHomework consists of two parts: lecture and laboratory. The lecture itself consists of two parts: readings, discussion, and problem solving. The laboratory consists of learning about and employing existing technology. During the class they will form a synergy at times and at others will be somewhat apart in content due to the nature of technology itself. Grades in both lecture and laboratry are based on thoughtfulness of subject matter, homework hygenie, and timeliness. The laboratory grade contributes to the homework grade--at this point we'll leave it at that. All exams are open book, open note, etc. The exams are an onus brought about by our attraction to the blackhole of procrastination---but I also look it as a means to demonstrate what you have ruminated on--and even take this forward into your majors and careers as you journey through the Univiersity life
Introduction: Day I
1st two chapters of Mount by David W. Mount: you must purchase this text / Get Access to Building / Get Access to Computer Accounts / Cards / First two Chapters of R text book too/ Please read this article What is a Gene? and write an electronic summary (one page) of it is (1) main point (2) how it can help you understand bioinformatics (3) what is unusual about the paper.
Laboratory: Day I
We will be using R and a fine book as an introduction, Statistics An Introduction using R
Laboratory Day I
Lab Assignment One
Lecture Day II: Introduction to Sequence Homology
Our IT staff has finally overcome the challenge of VPN. This means you haven't had access to sanctioned (machines with the all the promised) software. I am, therefore, changing the due date of the first laboratory to September Friday 19, 2008--which gives you the remainder of this week and next week. There may be written homework. The new machine is bradbury.informatics.indiana.edu and is up and running, with Perl, MySQL server, and Apache web server running
etc. All requested accounts have been created if there was a quarry or mercury (web pages) account. You must be able to log in--and do that as soon as you can to confirm your account. If you cannot, email Bob at rkonicek[AT]indiana[PERIOD]edu. I am linking the presentation Sequence Homology as pptx and pdf. The new reading T-Coffee: A Novel Methodh for Fast and Acurate Multiple Sequence Alignmentis somewhat forward looking, but should be interesting--the write-up is due at the beginning of class.
Action items: Mount [Chapt 3], R [Chapt 3-4], new reading, log in to bradbury.
Letcture Day II: Big-Oh, Recursive Optimization
pptx of presentations.
Lecture Day III: Recursive Optimization and some Vocabulary
pptx. As a bonus, I'm giving you one homework problem early--it's not due until next Friday short homework. The reading is the original Smith-Waterman note:Identification of common molecular subsequences
Lecture Day IV: N-W and S-W alignment algorithms
pptx I will post new lab and written homework Sunday or Monday--to let you catch-up and play with R.
Lecture Day V: FASTA and BLAST
pptx The new homework is Lab II. Please read this paper on fatty acids for Wednesday.
Lecture Day VI: FASTA and BLAST
pptx The new homework is posted in the ppt file. Please read the two chapters on Biomarkers.
A tome of information on computational biology that will help you in many different areas.

Web Portals