Module overview
Large-scale approaches at the molecular, cellular, organismal and ecological level are revolutionizing biology by enabling systems-level questions to be addressed. In many cases, these approaches are driven by technologies that allow the components of biological systems to be surveyed en masse. For example, whole genome sequencing can rapidly profile complete human genomes and transcriptomic analyses provide quantitative surveys of 1000s of RNA molecules. In addition to changing fundamental biology, these techniques are a central component of personalized medicine by providing molecular readouts for individual patients to improve both diagnosis and therapy. Interpreting the outcome of these large-scale experiments requires an understanding of the experimental technologies themselves as well as the underlying biological processes. Bioinformatics techniques address many of the challenges of these experiments including how to process, analyse, visualize and ultimately interpret the data. This module will introduce students to large-scale ‘systems’ biology as well as equipping them with the practical, hands-on skills necessary to fully utilize data resulting from these techniques.