BIO 440 - Bioinformatics/Genomics

2 Credit(s)

In our lifetime Bioinformatics and Genomics will be a defining turn in our comprehension of how organisms work from the molecular level to organism level. These fields of study are at the cutting edge of science, especially for understanding human disease in the 21st century. Bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary field of biology and computer science, is based on garnering information from large biological databases using algorithms to mine data for relevant and meaningful genetic information. It especially relies on DNA, RNA, and protein sequence databases of organisms. Bioinformatics intersects with genomics, the genetic material of an organism, by utilizing genomic databases. In genomics, the genetic material of an organism is sequenced and patterns that dictate regulation, organizational patterns of gene expression, and how the genome functions as a whole, rather than at the discrete level of genes, is covered.