Use computational tools to investigate microbial genomes

Applying increasingly powerful computation to genomics contributes to important medical breakthroughs.

On this course, you will discover the basic principles of microbial bioinformatics analysis, and comparative genomics. Using Artemis, a free genome browser, you will find out how to investigate whole bacterial genomes, and through the analysis of bacterial genes and proteins, you will explore the genomic features of pathogens.

By the end of this course, you will be able to use genomic data to increase your knowledge of microbial genomes.

This course would benefit those interested in learning how to use tools to investigate bacterial genomes, and acquire bioinformatics skills to evaluate the role of microbial genes in disease. Using analytical tools to access and probe genomes, learners will find out how to perform comparative analyses of genes and their protein products.

The course will be of interest to undergraduates, post-graduates, researchers, bioinformaticians, microbiologists, and healthcare professionals. The opportunity to use online computational tools to probe bacterial genomes will also be of interest to teachers and their 16-18-year-old science and computing students.

Bacterial Genomes: From DNA to Protein Function using Bioinformatics is a recommended pre-requisite. Scientific terminology is explained.

This course will give you an opportunity to learn about and use Artemis, a free genome browser and annotation tool. To run this software effectively, you will require a computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) with 2GB RAM. The current version of Artemis requires version 1.8 of Java to run successfully. Java can be downloaded from this link.