BOL: Related items

Courses to Get You Started with Bioinformatics

LEGE — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:07:19 -0500

Bioinformatics is now at the heart of modern biology and medicine. From decoding genomes and predicting antimicrobial resistance, to developing personalized medicine and advancing evolutionary research, computational skills are no longer optional — they are essential.

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.

CSBB-v1.0

Neel — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 07:33:05 -0500

CSBB is a command line based bioinformatics suite to analyze biological data acquired through varied avenues of biological experiments. CSBB is implemented in Perl, while it also leverages the use of R and python in background for specific modules. Major focus of CSBB is to allow users from biology and bioinformatics community, to get benefited by performing down-stream analysis tasks while eliminating the need to write programming code. CSBB is currently available on Linux, UNIX, MAC OS and Windows platforms.

Currently CSBB provides 13 modules focused on analytical tasks like performing upper-quantile normalization on expression data or convert genome wide gene expression to z-scores when comparing expression data from different platforms.

More at https://github.com/skygenomics/CSBB-v1.0

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/skygenomics/CSBB-v1.0

Linux Cheat Sheet

Jitendra Narayan — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 17:30:04 -0500

In an attempt to find a good Linux reference for bioinformatician and BOL readers, I was unsuccessful at finding a decent one on the Internet. So, we decided to make a cheat sheet for biological programmers.

GroopM: Metagenomic binning toolset

Jit — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 08:59:45 -0600

GroopM is a metagenomic binning toolset. It leverages spatio-temoral
dynamics (differential coverage) to accurately (and almost automatically)
extract population genomes from multi-sample metagenomic datasets.

GroopM is largely parameter-free. Use: groopm -h for more info.

For installation and usage instructions see : http://ecogenomics.github.io/GroopM/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/ecogenomics/GroopM

Bioinformatics: Introduction to PERL

Archana Malhotra — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 09:49:37 -0500

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Perl. By the end of this course, attendees should be able to write simple Perl programs and to understand more complex Perl programs written by others. The course will be taught using the online Learning Perl materials created by Sofia Robb of the University of California Riverside. Further information is available.

Multigenome assembly

Jit — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 04:41:23 -0500

This project contains scripts and tutorials on how to assemble individual microbial genomes from metagenomes, as described in:

Genome sequences of rare, uncultured bacteria obtained by differential coverage binning of multiple metagenomes

Mads Albertsen, Philip Hugenholtz, Adam Skarshewski, Gene W. Tyson, Kåre L. Nielsen and Per .H. Nielsen

Nature Biotechnology 2013, doi: 10.1038/nbt.2579

See the associated online guide for detailed information.

https://github.com/MadsAlbertsen/multi-metagenome

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/MadsAlbertsen/multi-metagenome

NGS & Bioinformatics Summit Europe

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 17:02:34 -0500

NGS & Bioinformatics Summit Europe

Conference

7th to 8th October 2013
Berlin, Germany

Website: https://www.gtcbio.com/conference/ngseurope-overview
Contact person: Kristen Starkey

We welcome you to join us at GTC’s NGS & Bioinformatics Summit Europe on October 7-8, 2013 in Berlin, Germany.

Organized by: GTC
Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 7th September 2013

Krona

Jit — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 04:47:35 -0500

Krona allows hierarchical data to be explored with zooming, multi-layered pie charts. Krona charts can be created using an Excel template or KronaTools, which includes support for several bioinformatics tools and raw data formats. The interactive charts are self-contained and can be viewed with any modern web browser (see Browser support).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/marbl/Krona/wiki

Boku Chair of Bioinformatics

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 12:37:23 -0500

The Bioinformatics group at Boku University has two main areas of interest, underpinning a common goal, the study of complex systems in living organisms. To overcome the engineered redundancies and combinatorial effects prevalent in higher eukaryotes, novel views augmenting the classical gene by gene approaches are required. We combine
Work to establish improved quantitative experimental assays (such as microarrays or differential in-gel electrophoresis) and
Development of modern computational methods (such as hierarchical probabilistic models or integration of heterogeneous data sources)

Link @ http://bioinf.boku.ac.at/

TMAP - torrent mapping alignment program General Notes

Poonam Mahapatra — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 15:53:47 -0500

TMAP - torrent mapping alignment program General Notes

TMAP is a fast and accurate alignment software for short and long nucleotide sequences produced by next-generation sequencing technologies.

The latest TMAP is unsupported. To use a supported version, please see the TMAP version associated with a Torrent Suite release below.

Get the latest source code:

git clone git://github.com/iontorrent/TMAP.git
 cd TMAP
 git submodule init
 git submodule update

https://github.com/iontorrent/TS/tree/master/Analysis/TMAP

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/iontorrent/TS/tree/master/Analysis/TMAP