Scribe: L. Heath

Today's Handouts and Announcements

• The course syllabus is available in LaTeX source and in Postscript.

• A sign-up sheet for participants and for scribes was passed around.

Today's Topics

• An Introduction to Molecular Biology

  • DNA: strings over a 4-letter alphabet (A,C,G,T); each letter called a base; single- and double-stranded; static code for the functioning of a cell

  • RNA: strings over the same 4-letter alphabet, except U substitutes for T; mRNA (messenger RNA) transcribes genetic information from one of the DNA strands and carries it to the ribosomes

  • Proteins: provide for cell structure and function; manufactured from mRNA template in ribosomes; primary structure is a sequence of amino acids; 3 bases code for 1 amino acid --- called a codon

• Computer Science in computational biology

  • Algorithms including design, analysis, and NP-completeness

  • Models including graphs, automata, and Markov chains

  • Databases including sequence information for DNA, RNA, and proteins; structure information for proteins

• Mathematics in computational biology

  • Graph theory for models

  • Combinatorics for analyzing discrete phenomena

  • Probability for modeling stochastic phenomena and for random algorithms

Today's Sources

• Setubal and Meidanis: Chapter 1.

• Salzberg, Searls, and Kasif: Not used today.

• Some of the slides from my talk Some Biology for Computer Scientists were used for today's material.