INSTRUCTORS:
Pearson, William, Ph.D., University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Smith, Randall, Ph.D., SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, King of Prussia, PA
Lisa Stubbs, Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
Alignment: from proteins to genomes - This course presents a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of computational methods for extracting the maximum amount of information from protein and DNA sequence similarity through sequence database searches, statistical analysis, and multiple sequence alignment, and genome scale alignment. Additional topics include identifying signals in unaligned sequences, integration of genetic and sequence information in biological databases. This year, there will be a special focus on metagenomics and functional prediction.
The course combines lectures with hands-on exercises; students are encouraged to pose challenging sequence analysis problems using their own data. The course makes extensive use of local WWW pages to present problem sets and the computing tools to solve them. Students use Windows and Mac workstations attached to a UNIX server.
The course is designed for biologists seeking advanced training in biological sequence analysis, computational biology core resource directors and staff, and for scientists in other disciplines, such as computer science, who wish to survey current research problems in biological sequence analysis and comparative genomics.
The primary focus of the Computational and Comparative Genomics Course is the theory and practice of algorithms used in computational biology, with the goal of using current methods more effectively and developing new algorithms. Cold Spring Harbor also offers a "Programming for Biology" course, which focuses more on software development.
For additional information and the lecture schedule and problem sets for the 2008 course, see:
http://fasta.bioch.virginia.edu/cshl/
To apply to the course, fill out and send in the form at:
http://meetings.cshl.edu/course/courseapp_instr.shtml