Gain practical data science skills

Bioinformatics is crucial in helping to understand large and complex sets of biological data.

On this three-week course, you’ll develop your knowledge of bioinformatics and gain practical experience in scaling up analysis and working with large and complex datasets effectively.

With this knowledge, you’ll have the skills to tackle real-world genomics research challenges, enhancing your career prospects in fields such as genomics medicine, bioinformatics, and data science.

This course builds on the foundation of our Bioinformatics for Biologists: An Introduction to Linux, Bash Scripting, and R course to help you enhance your genomic data analysis skills.

Develop your understanding of DNA sequencing

You’ll start by gaining an introduction to sequencing technologies and current sequencing outputs.

Dive into the rich history of DNA sequencing and how it has evolved in the Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) era before gaining practical skills in mapping sequencing data to a reference genome.

Delve into workflow management and analysis

Next, you’ll unpack bioinformatics workflows as you learn how to use workflow management software such as Nextflow.

With this knowledge, you’ll gain skills to adapt existing workflows to your specific needs and optimise your analysis processes.

Explore data analysis with R

Finally, you’ll explore downstream analysis with the versatile R programming language. You’ll learn how to work with pipeline outputs in R to conduct in-depth analysis and visualisation.

Guided by the experts at Wellcome Connecting Science and using hands-on exercises, you’ll finish the course with both the knowledge and practical skills to effectively handle and analyse sequence datasets.

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Skip to 0 minutes and 16 seconds Welcome to the Bioinformatics for Biologists– Analysing and Interpreting Genomics Datasets course. We will take you on an exciting bioinformatics journey. The course starts with installing the most widely used bioinformatics tools and an overview of next-generation sequencing and their outputs. You will then master essential commands for quality control, mapping, and variant calling. After that, you will discover the power of workflow managers such as Nextflow to transform your ability to build reproducible bioinformatics pipelines. You’ll also be introduced to pre-existing pipelines and learn how to adapt them to automate your own analysis. This will enable you to explore your own data and run bioinformatics pipelines more efficiently.

Skip to 0 minutes and 59 seconds Finally, you will learn how to perform downstream analysis of pipeline outputs in R by using powerful R packages such as ggplot2 to create informative figures and uncover valuable insights from your results. Join us on this course to learn some transformative ways of analysing genomics data.

What topics will you cover?

Brief introduction to sequencing technologies and an overview of current sequencing outputs
Sequence quality control to ensure data accuracy and reliability
Bioinformatics workflows utilising tools such as Nextflow using nf-core pipelines
Mapping sequencing data to a reference genome for alignment and variant calling
Working with pipeline outputs in R to perform downstream analysis and visualisation.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

17 Jun 2024

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

Use software managers to install and run reproducible bioinformatics tools
Handle and analyse sequence datasets through hands-on exercises
Analyse quality control metrics for sequencing data
Modify existing workflows to suit specific task requirements and optimise analysis processes
Interrogate and interpret the results obtained from running bioinformatics pipelines
Perform downstream analyses of pipeline outputs using R, enabling data visualisation and further exploration

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for those with some prior knowledge of bioinformatics. We recommend starting with our Bioinformatics for Biologists: An Introduction to Linux, Bash Scripting, and R course.

You will need access to a Linux based operating system and some prior knowledge of Linux command line will be needed for you to benefit completely from the learning on this course.

This course will be particularly useful for a genomics researcher, molecular biologist, bioinformatics practitioner, or anyone looking to pursue a career in data science.

Who will you learn with?

Andries van Tonder

I'm a researcher with extensive experience analysing large bacterial genome datasets. My specific research areas include using WGS to study transmission in different bacterial species.

Ruth Nanjala

Ruth is a bioinformatician who’s previously led the Bioinformatics Mentorship and Incubation program at icipe, Kenya. She is also a Carpentries instructor.

Fatma Guerfali

Researcher at Institut Pasteur in Tunis and Trainer in Bioinformatics. Passionate about data analysis and visualization for pathogens related Genomics and Transcriptomics

Who developed the course?

Wellcome Connecting Science

Wellcome Connecting Science develops and delivers open postgraduates courses and conferences focused on biomedicine.

What's included?

Wellcome Connecting Science are offering everyone who joins this course a free digital upgrade, so that you can experience the full benefits of studying online for free. This means that you get:

Unlimited access to this course

Includes any articles, videos, peer reviews and quizzes

Tests to validate your learning

A PDF Certificate of Achievement to prove your success when you’re eligible

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