Bioinformatics and Computational Biology are the fields that integrate biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics disciplines to solve relevant biological problems. These fields arose and evolved as a need to comprehend and analyse high-throughput data generated by high-dimensional profiling tools. Founded mostly on the basis of fundamental laws of evolution, these powerful fields have become the leitmotif of today’s problem-solving approaches in biology. This course is designed as an Introductory course with basics in theory and computational skills, required for a beginner to understand and grasp the subject for an easy segue into an advanced stage.

Students will be exposed to a short history of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and to all the relevant databases and tools at the disposal of researchers followed by an understanding of computational algorithms behind the development of these. This will be followed by hands-on practicals using both the sequence- and structure-based prediction tools with a focus on solving real biological problems.