CS 6824: New Directions in Computational Systems Biology

Instructor: T. M. Murali (murali at cs dot vt edu)

Cell and molecular biology are awash in data. Over the last 10-15 years, numerous computational methods have been developed that can assimilate and integrate massive quantities of data in order to find hidden patterns in them that may contain useful biological information. However, manually-intensive examination of the results is necessary in order to propose hypotheses that can be validated in the wet lab. This drawback mitigates the utility of these methods for driving biological experiments. A more recent trend is the development of methods that have been designed from the outset to more easily suggest experimental hypotheses and validation studies. This course will discuss such methods, mainly developed over the last three-four years, by studying papers from the literature. To get an idea of the types of papers we will study, visit http://www.citeulike.org/user/tmmurali/tag/new-csb-course. The format of the course and the desired pre-requisites are similar to CS/GBCB 5854. Lectures, student presentations, and a semester-long group course project are the main components of the course. Students are not required to have taken CS/GBCB 5854 before taking this course. Students who have already taken CS/GBCB 5854 can also take this course.