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Computational Molecular Biology, aka Algorithms for Computational BiologyHome * Syllabus * Course Information * Readings and Resources * Lecturers,TAs, office hours * Homework Submission * Collaboration Policy |
This is a graduate course that is intended to accommodate students with diverse backgrounds in computer science and biology. Therefore, I expect you to be resourceful about finding the reading materials that are most appropriate for you. Do not just sit and wait for me to tell you what to read - if there is a term or concept you don't understand or want to understand better, try searching on Google, going to the library to get a reference book, or looking up a review article in Pubmed. I will do my best to provide you with starting points and key terms/concepts that will allow you to look things up quickly.
Parts of the course and the outside reading are based on the text:
Biological Sequence Analysis: Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids by Durbin, Eddy, Krogh, and Mitchison is a required text. It is available at Amazon and other fine websites- it has not been ordered specifically by the Washington University bookstore.
A reference that may occasionally be useful is Genomes, 2nd Edition, By T.A. Brown is a useful reference. It is available online.
Homeworks will require programming in C, on UNIX systems. A large number of books on C and UNIX are available. Find ones that suit your style. For short, clear, and authoritative, I recommend:
B.W. Kernighan and D.M. Ritchie. 1988.
G. Anderson and P. Anderson. 1986.
I strongly suggest that, if your background in molecular biology is limited, you purchase or otherwise get access to a serious introductory textbook on molecular biology or cell and molecular biology. There are a number of good ones around, and it doesn't much matter which one you use --- they all contain pretty much the same basic facts. I will not refer to these explicitly in lecture, but I suggest you read a few choice chapters. For example, I use
Molecular Cell Biology, by Harvey Lodish, et al., 4th Edition. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
NEW The full text is available through PubMed!
This book is expensive but everyone interested enough to take this course should own this book or one like it. There is a good supplementary website for the book, but looking at the site is no substitute for owning the book. I would particularly recommend the following chapters:
Also of interest, though less central to the lecture topics, are:
There are vast treasure troves of biology information, including complete courses, available for free on the web. For example, I just typed "molecular biology textbooks" into Google and the top hit was this valuable page. I have checked out one site linked from it, which I can recommend: the MIT online biology textbook. However, I still think it is worth having your own hardcopy molecular biology text, as it will provide lots more information and probably better indexing.
A number of lectures will be based on specific journal papers. Here is a list that will probably grow as the semester progresses, with links to online copies where possible.
Burge, C. 1997. Identification of Genes in Human Genomic DNA. Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
(This is actually a dissertation but it is the best available source on HMM Gene Finding.)
Many journals provide all their articles on line. Some are free to anyone and many others are free if you access them through the library's Full Text Sources list. One of the most important for this class is Genome Research -- It is well worth browsing.