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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Genome Sequencing (Bioinformatics II) by University of California San Diego

4.6
stars
314 ratings

About the Course

You may have heard a lot about genome sequencing and its potential to usher in an era of personalized medicine, but what does it mean to sequence a genome? Biologists still cannot read the nucleotides of an entire genome as you would read a book from beginning to end. However, they can read short pieces of DNA. In this course, we will see how graph theory can be used to assemble genomes from these short pieces. We will further learn about brute force algorithms and apply them to sequencing mini-proteins called antibiotics. In the first half of the course, we will see that biologists cannot read the 3 billion nucleotides of a human genome as you would read a book from beginning to end. However, they can read shorter fragments of DNA. In this course, we will see how graph theory can be used to assemble genomes from these short pieces in what amounts to the largest jigsaw puzzle ever put together. In the second half of the course, we will discuss antibiotics, a topic of great relevance as antimicrobial-resistant bacteria like MRSA are on the rise. You know antibiotics as drugs, but on the molecular level they are short mini-proteins that have been engineered by bacteria to kill their enemies. Determining the sequence of amino acids making up one of these antibiotics is an important research problem, and one that is similar to that of sequencing a genome by assembling tiny fragments of DNA. We will see how brute force algorithms that try every possible solution are able to identify naturally occurring antibiotics so that they can be synthesized in a lab. Finally, you will learn how to apply popular bioinformatics software tools to sequence the genome of a deadly Staphylococcus bacterium that has acquired antibiotics resistance....

Top reviews

SV

Jan 9, 2017

Great course to explore a bit of Bioinformatics for those with no background in Bioinformatics. I love the way the content has been provided, its interactivity increases the interest in the course.

MP

Dec 7, 2017

I like the real-world tasks, especially the assembly on the final exam. Some of the programming tasks, such as the antibiotic noisy spectrum assembly, are challenging (which is good).

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51 - 68 of 68 Reviews for Genome Sequencing (Bioinformatics II)

By Ahmad M Y A

•

Dec 16, 2016

excellent

By Tomasz K

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May 10, 2017

Great!

By LEGENDARY A

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Jun 4, 2020

nice

By chenhyde628

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Sep 25, 2016

wery

By Huairen Z

•

Nov 26, 2021

This course is wonderful for students who are interested in genome assembly. The course contains examples data and codes for analysing genome assembly. The challenge is that many example codes are difficult for beginners, and some of the algorithms are hard to interpret. I wonder weather the instructors can provide more clues and toy example codes for beginners. I believe that the course will attract more and more people if there are more specific examples and more deep about the real data sets in bioinformatics. Because there is still a challenge for us to write our own scripts for construct a genome even we have finished the course. Of course, maybe the aim of this course is just give students a general outlook of genome assembly. Anyone, This course is wonderful and there still a lot of improvement in this class.

By Carolina G

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Aug 7, 2020

Very good course. The course staff needs to take a look at some pseudo codes and stepik assessments because they are kinda heavy to process. Besides that, great info and development.

By bob n

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Aug 6, 2020

Really enjoyed the course. Dropped from five to four stars because the final challenge introduced several new concepts rather than integrating concepts taught throughout the class.

By Елена Ш

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Apr 17, 2020

Сам курс довольно интересный, но в итоговом задании не работали некоторые программы. Кроме того приходилось дважды сбрасывать сроки чтобы дождаться оценки.

By Meng Z

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Sep 15, 2019

This course is great, but some times I can't open the dataset to test my code. I wish this can be fixed.

By ChenYuexi

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Jun 21, 2017

There is no debug dataset like the previous course, which means you will get stuck longer.

By Juanjo B

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Apr 29, 2019

The instruction material was slightly less helpful than in bioinformatics I.

By Ashwin S S

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Jul 28, 2023

Pretty solid course, with tough algorithms to crack.

By Shweta C

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Oct 4, 2017

Great course for beginning in Genome sequencing..

By Nikhil Y

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Apr 23, 2020

it was an amazing course to learn!!

By KYRA M D A

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Dec 2, 2020

It was so hard for me. :(

By Ivan F

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Aug 9, 2018

good introduction :)

By Shri A

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Sep 26, 2022

gOOD

By joão h o

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Jun 3, 2020

The course covers interesting topics, but the explanations could be clearer and more formal. The extra activities are not very clear or complete (also and I do not consider it a course for those who have no background in programming). The final activity doesn't work properly (the link to realize the project has expired and is no longer available).