Computational Biology at the Field Museum Workshop - CBFM

Computational work becomes increasingly important for modern biologists to analyze massive data sets generated by high-throughput sequencing techniques. Biologists who never thought they would need computational skills are now finding that using an Excel spreadsheet is simply not enough to work with their gigabytes of sequencing data. These sequencing data are usually produced in the form of large text files, which make the Unix operating system (including Linux) particularly suited to processing such files (especially when operated from the command line). Hence, the aim of this workshop is to introduce computational biology work using Linux to anyone who has never previously worked with the Linux command line.

During the first weeks of the course, you will learn basic but powerful Linux commands to manage your folder structure, handle large files, and install and execute programs. After you feel comfortable in the Linux command line environment, you will apply your new knowledge to: assemble high throughput sequencing data into continuous genomes, verify the integrity of these genomes by sequence mapping, use search methods to identify gene regions, and use these regions for phylogenetic reconstruction – all on the Linux operating system. We’ll finish this course with a basic introduction to concepts of the programming language Python which will allow you to script your personal bioinformatics routines.

Download Course Syllabus here.