Skip to main content
Helicase

Reading biology with computers

Databases, sequence alignment and predicting protein structure.

Bioinformatics7 steps
Start with Bioinformatics

Steps

Take the steps in order or jump to any of them. Readings link to the labs and sources behind them, and the quiz at the end is graded on our server.

  1. BioinformaticsStep 1: Read, 50 XP
  2. Biological databasesStep 2: Read, 50 XP
  3. Sequence alignmentStep 3: Read, 50 XP
  4. Substitution matricesStep 4: Read, 50 XP
  5. BLASTStep 5: Read, 50 XP
  6. Protein structure predictionStep 6: Read, 50 XP
  7. Reading biology with computersStep 7: Quiz, up to 250 XP

About bioinformatics

Bioinformatics uses computers to make sense of biological data, such as the letters of DNA.

Bioinformaticians align sequences, search databases, assemble genomes and predict protein structures.

Core methods include dynamic-programming alignment, heuristic search with BLAST, substitution matrices, public databases such as GenBank, UniProt and the Protein Data Bank, and structure prediction with AlphaFold.

The Bioinformatics field guide