Introducing Programming Skills for Life Science Students

The advent of the high‐throughput next‐generation sequencing produced a large number of biological data. Knowledge discovery from the huge amount of available biological data requires researchers to develop solid skills in biology and computer science. As the majority of the Bioinformatics professio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biochemistry and molecular biology education Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 288 - 295
Main Authors: Mariano, Diego, Martins, Pedro, Helene Santos, Lucianna, de Melo‐ Minardi, Raquel Cardoso
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Hoboken, USA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2019
Wiley-Blackwell
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:
Algorithms
Basic Skills
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics education
Biological Sciences
Biology
College Students
Computer applications
Computer Literacy
Computer science
Computer Science Education
life science students
Life sciences
Molecular Biology
Programming
Programming Languages
Python programming language
Skill Development
Students
Training
Python programming language
life science students
Bioinformatics education
ISSN:1470-8175, 1539-3429, 1539-3429
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The advent of the high‐throughput next‐generation sequencing produced a large number of biological data. Knowledge discovery from the huge amount of available biological data requires researchers to develop solid skills in biology and computer science. As the majority of the Bioinformatics professionals are either computer science or life sciences graduates, to teach biology skills to computer science students and computational skills to life science students has become usual. In this article, we reported the experience of teaching programming for life science students. Our strategy is composed by explaining basic concepts of algorithms, ion of biological problems, and script programming using Python language. Based on the student's answers to an assessment questionnaire, we conclude that the course achieved positive results. They reported an improvement in their skills in programming and bioinformatics. Furthermore, the students approved the didactic adopted in the classes and evaluation methods (programming exercises and final presentation). This article is useful for other professors who want to implement an initial bioinformatics training for undergraduate or graduate students in life sciences. We believe that the strategies here demonstrated could be reproduced, which could help in the formation of a new generation of bioinformaticians with hybrid abilities in computation and biology. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(3):288–295, 2019.
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ISSN:1470-8175
1539-3429
1539-3429
DOI:10.1002/bmb.21230