Yet, for many students, biologists, and even computer scientists, the question is: “Where do I begin?” With so many platforms, books, and tutorials available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

To make it easier, I’ve compiled 10 excellent resources — ranging from beginner-friendly introductions to advanced computational genomics courses. Many of these are freely available, created by pioneers in the field, and widely used in classrooms and research labs worldwide.

Whether you are a complete beginner or looking to strengthen your foundations, these courses will help you build the skills needed to analyze biological data, design workflows, and think computationally about complex biological systems.

1. HarvardX Data Analysis for Genomics by Rafael Irizarry

From the almighty Rafa, this set of online courses (via edX/HarvardX) is a classic starting point for genomic data science and bioinformatics.

2. Applied Computational Genomics – Aaron Quinlan

Aaron Quinlan (creator of bedtools and many other tools) has made his course materials open. A practical, tool-driven genomics introduction.

3. Bioinformatics Algorithms (Coursera + Companion Book)

Find the highly visual video classes on Coursera, backed by the popular Bioinformatics Algorithms book.

4. The Biostar Handbook

Not a course per se, but a hands-on manual by Istvan (founder of Biostars.org) that’s even used in classes at Penn State.

5. Introduction to Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (by Shirley Liu)

A comprehensive introduction from Shirley Liu’s lab (Harvard DFCI). Covers both theory and computational practice.

6. Data Carpentry: Genomics Workshops

Community-driven training workshops that focus on practical, reproducible research. I was honored to serve as curriculum committee chair here.

7. Computational Genomics: Applied Comparative Genomics

From the Schatz Lab — applied comparative genomics with real-world data.

8. Introduction to Computational Biology (Mike Love, creator of DESeq2)

This course bridges statistics, biology, and computation — a solid primer for anyone entering computational biology.

9. MIT Computational Biology (6.047 / 6.878 / HST.507) by Manolis Kellis

Covers genomes, networks, evolution, and health. A deep-dive from MIT’s OpenCourseWare archive.

10. An Introduction to Applied Bioinformatics

An interactive textbook with Python code, designed for practical applied bioinformatics learning.

Population genetics: A concise guide. John Gillespie.The Johns Hopkins University Press (1997)•

Population genetics. J. S. Gale. Wiley (1980)•

Evolutionary genetics. John Maynard-Smith. Oxford University Press (1998)•

The growth of biological thought. Ernst Mayr. Harvard University Press (1985)•

Guns, germs and steel. Jared Diamond. W. W. Norton (2007)•

Evolutionary theory: Mathematical and conceptual foundations. Sean Rice. Oxford University Press (2004)

Address of the bookmark: http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/3/32115/

Breitbart lab is located in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She is chosen as top "10 Brilliant" scientist by Popular Science magazine.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/mya-breitbart

Lab Link:
https://sites.google.com/site/breitbartgenomicslab/
http://www.marine.usf.edu/faculty/mya-breitbart.shtml

http://www.bccs.uni.no/units/cbu/research/rehmsmeier/

All applications sent before 2nd of February 2015.

http://www.mind-project.eu/career

WALK -IN- TEST CUM INTERVIEW

Walk- in- Test cum Interview (based on test) for the selection of Research Associate (Bioinformatics) & Bioinformatic Trainees under the scheme ‘Distributed Information Sub Centre- DISC’ will be held at this Institute as per details indicated below.

Research Associate

Date of Interview : 21 -01-2014 at 10.00 A.M

Qualifications : a) Essential: Doctorate degree in Bioinformatics or Biotechnology/Life Sciences/Biochemistry with expertise in Bioinformatics as evidenced by publications.

OR

Three years research experience after MVSc/MPharm/ME/MTech with Bioinformatics Specialization.

b Desirable: Experience in handling NGS data Programming skills in Python/Bioperl

Emoluments : Rs:22000/- per month + HRA (higher pay upto Rs.24000/- can be paid depending on the qualifications and experience.

Upper age limit : 40 years for Men & 45 years for Women as on date of Interview (Upper Age limits are relaxable for SC, ST and OBC candidates as per Govt. of India norms (at present 5 years for SC/ST and 3 years for OBC)

Duration of Project : Till the closure of the project.

General Terms and conditions

1. The above positions are purely on temporary basis and is co-terminus with the closure of the project. There is no provision of re-employment after termination of project. The selected candidate will not have any right for claiming pay scale or absorption against any regular post being vacant on a later date at this Institute.
2 . No TA/DA will be paid for attending the Interview.
3. Canvassing in any form will lead to cancellation of candidate.
4. The decision of Director, IISR would be final and binding in all aspects.
5. Candidates will not be permitted to enter the Examination Hall after 10.00 A.M.
6. Candidates who secure the minimum marks prescribed by the Institute in written test only will be eligible for calling for the interview. The number of candidates to be called for the interview will be decided by the Director of the Institute.
7 Those who do not possess original Degree/PG certificate or Provisional certificate will not be allowed to attend the Test/Interview.

Note: All relevant certificates (in original) and bio data
No objection certificate in case he/she is employed elsewhere and experience certificate in original (if any) need to be produced at the time of interview.
Location of IISR Kozhikode Main Campus - Pallithazham bus stop between Moozhikkal East and Chelavoor on the NH 212 ”Kozhikode - Kollegal” Road.

Advertisement: www.spices.res.in/pdf/DISC-Website.pdf

The closing date for application will be 26 June 2015.

• the Damerau–Levenshtein distance allows insertion, deletion, substitution, and the transposition of two adjacent characters;
• the longest common subsequence (LCS) distance allows only insertion and deletion, not substitution;
• the Hamming distance allows only substitution, hence, it only applies to strings of the same length.
• the Jaro distance allows only transposition.

use Text::Levenshtein qw(distance);

 print distance("foo","four");
 # prints "2"

 my @words     = qw/ four foo bar /;
 my @distances = distance("foo",@words);

 print "@distances";
 # prints "2 0 3"

use Algorithm::LCSS qw( LCSS CSS CSS_Sorted );
    my $lcss_ary_ref = LCSS( \@SEQ1, \@SEQ2 );  # ref to array
    my $lcss_string  = LCSS( $STR1, $STR2 );    # string
    my $css_ary_ref = CSS( \@SEQ1, \@SEQ2 );    # ref to array of arrays
    my $css_str_ref = CSS( $STR1, $STR2 );      # ref to array of strings
    my $css_ary_ref = CSS_Sorted( \@SEQ1, \@SEQ2 );  # ref to array of arrays
    my $css_str_ref = CSS_Sorted( $STR1, $STR2 );    # ref to array of strings

There are many different modules on CPAN for calculating the edit distance between two strings. Here's just a selection.

Text::LevenshteinXS and Text::Levenshtein::XS are both versions of the Levenshtein algorithm that require a C compiler, but will be a lot faster than this module.

The Damerau-Levenshtein edit distance is like the Levenshtein distance, but in addition to insertion, deletion and substitution, it also considers the transposition of two adjacent characters to be a single edit. The module Text::Levenshtein::Damerau defaults to using a pure perl implementation, but if you've installed Text::Levenshtein::Damerau::XS then it will be a lot quicker.

Text::WagnerFischer is an implementation of the Wagner-Fischer edit distance, which is similar to the Levenshtein, but applies different weights to each edit type.

Text::Brew is an implementation of the Brew edit distance, which is another algorithm based on edit weights.

Text::Fuzzy provides a number of operations for partial or fuzzy matching of text based on edit distance. Text::Fuzzy::PP is a pure perl implementation of the same interface.

String::Similarity takes two strings and returns a value between 0 (meaning entirely different) and 1 (meaning identical). Apparently based on edit distance.

Text::Dice calculates Dice's coefficient for two strings. This formula was originally developed to measure the similarity of two different populations in ecological research.