Bioinformatics for Biologists: Analysing and Interpreting Genomics Datasets
Boost your career by gaining the skills to install and modify the elements of a bioinformatics workflow to suit your needs with this online course from Wellcome Connecting Science.
Duration
3 weeks
Weekly study
6 hours
100% online
How it works
Digital upgrade
Free
Gain practical data science skills
Bioinformatics is crucial in helping to understand large and complex sets of biological data.
On this three-week course, you’ll develop your knowledge of bioinformatics and gain practical experience in scaling up analysis and working with large and complex datasets effectively.
With this knowledge, you’ll have the skills to tackle real-world genomics research challenges, enhancing your career prospects in fields such as genomics medicine, bioinformatics, and data science.
Develop your understanding of DNA sequencing
You’ll start by gaining an introduction to sequencing technologies and current sequencing outputs.
Dive into the rich history of DNA sequencing and how it has evolved in the Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) era before gaining practical skills in mapping sequencing data to a reference genome.
Delve into workflow management and analysis
Next, you’ll unpack bioinformatics workflows as you learn how to use workflow management software such as Nextflow.
With this knowledge, you’ll gain skills to adapt existing workflows to your specific needs and optimise your analysis processes.
Explore data analysis with R
Finally, you’ll explore downstream analysis with the versatile R programming language. You’ll learn how to work with pipeline outputs in R to conduct in-depth analysis and visualisation.
Guided by the experts at Wellcome Connecting Science and using hands-on exercises, you’ll finish the course with both the knowledge and practical skills to effectively handle and analyse sequence datasets.
Week 1
Introduction to sequence quality control, mapping and variant calling
Introduction to Week 1
Welcome to the course and to Week 1. How we learn on this course, meeting your educators and general introductions. Introductory steps: glossary, file formats explained, software setup for the course.
DNA sequencing, history and present
Introduction to and history of DNA sequencing, Next Generation Sequencing and key steps of the analysis pipeline explained.
Sequence quality control
What is FastQ file and why doing sequence quality control. Running FastQC and interpreting FastQC results.
Mapping
Mapping of the sample sequence, exercise and discussion
Variant calling
Identifying and characterising genetic variants, exercise and discussion
Summary of Week 1
Week 1 learning short summary and Help area.
Week 2
Workflow Management and Analysis
Introduction to workflow management
Introduction to Week 2 with introductory workflow and workflow management systems information. Introducing nf-core pipeline to be used in the course.
Workflow management and analysis
Installing and using Nextflow workflow manager, running viral recon pipeline and analysing results.
Summary of Week 2
Tidy up and reflect while watching the interview with Dr Phelelani T. Mpangase, access short summary of the week's learning and help area for the learners.
Week 3
Downstream analysis with R
Introduction to visualisation using RStudio
Introductory information for week 3, what is covered and what prerequisite knowledge is required. Best practices for setting up your work environment.
Exploring the data
Exploration of of the data structures used for later visualisation and analysis, subsetting the data, statistics summary on the data.
Data visualisation and analysis
Data visualisation and plotting transformation using ggplot2, variants exploration, exercise and discussion.
Summary of Week 3
Short summary of week's learning and help area, followed by the final test for this course.
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